


Held for Ransom

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Noir, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Non-Binary Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Detective Noir, Flirting, Fluff, Foreplay, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Homme Fatale Peter Nureyev, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery, Nonbinary Juno Steel, Other, Plot Twists, Sexual Tension, Trans Peter Nureyev, homme fataling it up, it's mag don't worry, juno's embarrassing thing for nureyev's teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:07:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26313148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: Hyperion City was a hell of a town once you got a stomach for it. It was the beating heart of the state, with clogged highways for arteries and a million little cells flowing in and out of it like clockwork. It was a city that never slept, and so the pumping throb of commuters and pedestrians and tourists was a constant, two-way stream.When one of those cells dropped dead, it became the business of Juno Steel, Private Eye.Updating daily!
Relationships: Peter Nureyev & Rita, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 118
Kudos: 141





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I spent a HOT SEC just storyboarding this one so please enjoy! Most of the time I've dipped/been inactive on ao3 has been writing this. It's at like 25k words (as of now, bound to change with edits) and frankly this one's just my baby. I spent so long on these frickin clues man i felt like i had a conspiracy board
> 
> I know these content warnings look like a lot, I'm just trying to cover all my bases. Essentially, a crime scene is described.
> 
> Content warnings for death mention, blood mention, implied period-typical homophobia (nobody says/does anything actively homophobic, but it's implied that it's common), injury mention, referenced sexual activity, police corruption, cancer/disease mention (past), referenced parental abuse, burglary/theft mention

Hyperion City was a hell of a town once you got a stomach for it. It was the beating heart of the state, with clogged highways for arteries and a million little cells flowing in and out of it like clockwork. It was a city that never slept, and so the pumping throb of commuters and pedestrians and tourists was a constant, two-way stream.

When one of those cells dropped dead, it became the business of Juno Steel, Private Eye. 

November hung in the air like a hazy smoke, thick and low and choking. It lazed around the nose and mouth and seized around the throat, chuckling darkly all the while that it had no plans of going anywhere anytime soon. The sky looked about ready to break into a drizzle, but then again, the slate gray sky had been mumbling those same empty threats for the last few days. 

On the day Juno received that fateful phone call from that damned voice that dripped honey and blood in equal measure, a fog hung low around his office’s window. Maybe the sky might make up its mind and let the storm loose after all. 

“There’s a guy on the phone, Mistah Steel,” Rita called from the other room. “Says he’s got a case for you.” 

“Can he pay?” Juno returned, barely sparing a glance up from his crossword. 

When it looked like twenty six across would linger outside his grasp for longer than he cared to be bothered over, he cast the paper aside and turned his attention to his coffee instead. Black as a gutter. He’d die before admitting he put sugar in it. 

“Yeah, says his adoptive dad was found dead and he’ll have the inheritance to make up what he’s gonna blow on you,” Rita explained. 

“Love to know I feel appreciated,” Juno snorted. 

“Job’s a job, boss,” she shrugged. 

“Put him through.” 

Juno winced away the last over-sweet dregs of his coffee, then picked up the phone he kept on his crowded desk. 

“Juno Steel, Private Eye.”

“Oh, thank heavens,” the man on the other end gasped. Juno heart a faint thud, as if the client’s hand had flown to his chest. “I’ve had quite the morning. I called you as soon as I gathered myself.” 

“I got the gist from my secretary, but do me a favor and jog my memory. What happened?” Juno asked. He brushed aside a few papers to reach for a notebook, tore out the first few pages of pen tests, and started to write as the man spoke. 

“Was that the woman I was speaking to just now? She was quite—“ 

“Quit the schmoozing.”

“My apologies, detective,” the man resumed. He sounded far too businesslike for someone who had apparently just found his dad dead, but with his jaw set and his gaze shifty, Juno let it slide. Shock was an inconsistent mistress. 

“You got a name I can call you?” 

“Yes. My name is Peter Ransom.”

“Alright, Mister Ransom—“

“Only to my mother, Juno. Call me Peter,” Ransom insisted. Juno could almost hear the glint of that dangerous grin through the phone, the sound tickling against his neck as quite suddenly, the receiver grew slick in his palm.

“No thanks. I’m here to talk business,” Juno replied before his backstabbing pulse could get any quicker. 

“Quite unfortunate,” Peter sighed, as if Juno had just broken his heart in two. “If it’s business you want, it’s business I’ll give you, though I must warn you, discussions of death make me quite peckish. Might we have this conversation over dinner?” 

“What’s your angle here?” 

“No angle, detective. I’m just trying to find a Private Eye who can meet my needs,” Ransom began, a little colder this time. “Unless you would prefer I take my case elsewhere.” 

Juno sighed. 

“Fine. Just stick to business for now.” 

“Business it is then. I’m leaving for your office in a matter of minutes. I thought I might call ahead to forewarn you of my presence,” Peter said. 

“I’ll mark you down for an appointment. Anything else you’re calling for?”

“And to warn you my appearance may not be at its best. I called the police when I found my father this morning, and I’ve just left their questioning,” Ransom sighed. “I’m at a payphone now.”

“Oh really? How’d you find the boys in blue?” Juno snorted. 

“Despicable.”

“Alright, so that wasn’t a lie,” Juno chuckled to himself, scribbling away on his notes. 

“The police recommended you by name, you know,” Ransom mused. 

“Excuse me?”

Juno raised an eyebrow. He’d been expecting another rich man’s murder case, with the same cast of characters as always. Ransom even fit the role of a faux-mourning heir like it had been cast for him. The introduction of the Hyperion City Police Department was the kind of layer that took this case from a shitty way to start the morning to the kind of thing that got his attention.

The police didn’t like Juno Steel, not least because he used to be one of them. His days in the HCPD were like a bloodstain, and he the piece of clothing left mottled and damaged and a little emptier, shoved in a plastic bag and stamped “evidence” until the cops were done throwing it around. It was the kind of stain he couldn’t wash out of himself if he tried, and he’d spent nearly a decade trying. He tried quitting and therapy and hell, even detective work, but he knew damn well his stomach would always twist when he heard that name spoken. 

“Yes, they—“ Ransom broke off, and distaste sidled into his voice the way poison makes friendly with a vein. “They had a few choice things to say about you, but they did recommend you on principle of being nearby.” 

“Any choice things I might wanna hear?” Juno snorted. 

“Oh, just that you’re—“ Ransom paused to clear his throat. “In their words, a rat bastard son of a bitch. Now, I believe that’s a bit harsh.” 

“Nope. Sounds like me.” 

“I suppose I’ll have to be the judge of that when we finally get that dinner,” Peter chuckled. Juno could hear the smirk all the way through the receiver and made a point of biting his tongue before he could get hopeful. 

“Yeah,” Juno tried not to choke. He failed. “When are you going to be here?” 

“It seems I’ll be darkening your door in under a half hour, if I’m rushing myself,” Ransom thought aloud. “I am quite disheveled, detective, I must say.”

“Don’t worry about it. I promise, however you look, I’ve seen worse. Probably in a mirror.” 

“Oh, my dearest detective, do be kinder to yourself,” Ransom laughed, as dark and sweet as a back-alley kiss. “A voice that lovely couldn’t just belong to anyone.” 

Juno was pretty sure his thrice broken nose and the little galaxy of scars he called his skin might beg to differ, but he kept it to himself. Ransom sounded pretty convinced, and he’d hate to break his bubble. 

“Alright. We can go over the case and payment details when you get here. I’m going to hang up so you can get getting here, okay?” 

“Anything for you, darling,” Ransom sighed. “What a shame we must depart, even just for a short while. For both of our sakes, I’ll try to keep that while short. I’ll see you soon, detective.” 

“Yeah,” Juno breathed before he realized he had ever become breathless. “Yeah. See you then.” 

Juno shoved the phone back onto the receiver like it burned to the touch, even shaking his hand and backing away for fear that might spread from the phone to his desk. 

“Rita, who the hell was that?” he gasped as if coming up for air. 

“I told you, boss, Mistah Ransom’s the guy who’s gonna—“

“Yeah, yeah, I know that but was he—“ Juno broke off to search for the word. “Did he strike you as weird at all?” 

“Not really. Just seemed like a real nice gentleman. He did always kinda sound like he was flirting with me, but I dunno if that was his fault. Some people just got it,” Rita shrugged. 

“Right.”

“Any reason you’re asking, boss?” Rita pressed. Juno couldn’t see much from where his face had fallen into his hands, but he heard her hands clap together from the other room. 

“Just because I’m—“ Juno sighed. 

“I know you ain’t interested in everybody just ‘cause you ain’t choosy or nothing, ‘cause I ain’t choosy or nothing and there are some really gross people out there, but you kept going bright red over there and a girl’s gotta worry about her boss and best friend looking like a beet when we got mysteries to solve!” 

“Rita, whatever happens with this case, I want you to promise me something, okay?” Juno started. He didn’t wait for a reply. “Don’t let me get my hopes up.” 

“But, boss!” 

“No buts. Ransom might be my client, but that doesn’t make him any less of a suspect. It’s happened before,” Juno sighed, glancing down to his notes once more. “We can’t eliminate anyone just because they’re nice to talk to. Besides, I don’t trust anybody who can schmooze that well. He’s gotta be a salesman, or—“

“I made a call or two about his dad. Socialite,” Rita finished.

Juno groaned. 

“That’s worse.” 

“Cheer up, boss! What’s the worst that could happen?” 

“Well, last time I did a case for a socialite, I lost six fingernails, so let’s say this time, we’re gunning for seven,” Juno retorted. 

“Boss—“ Rita protested.

“Rita—“ Juno returned with the exact same inflection. 

“Jeez, I always say you oughta be seeing someone, Mistah Steel,” Rita returned. 

“I’m not gonna date a client.”

“Nah, I meant in, like, a therapist way,” Rita elaborated. Juno snorted.

“Not enough cash in this whole damn city.”

Before either of them could say much more, the frosted window went dark with an unfamiliar silhouette. It was all lines and angles, though Juno could have sworn there was the soft curve of a cheek somewhere between what had to be a pressed suit and coiffed hair. His lip curled before the shadow could even knock. 

“Got an appointment?” Juno called, though it was technically Rita’s job to do so. 

“Detective,” said a voice that was as smooth as the first night of a honeymoon. “Do I really prove that forgettable?”

“Let yourself in.”

Peter Ransom didn’t let himself in so much as he made an entrance. The door pulled aside like the curtain before a cabaret show, and even though that long, dark shadow filled the doorway, the first part of Ransom that Juno truly registered was his teeth. 

Sharp, white, and bared in a hungry grin. 

Ransom wore his pants tight and his shirt buttoned an inch or two too low, dressed less to impress than to suggest what might lay underneath. The ghost of a love bite still haunted his collarbone, and Juno doubted the smudges of makeup on his neck hid anything different. On anybody else, his long legs and the shadow on his chest would have seemed lewd. Peter Ransom, however, wore such a look of debauchery like a millionaire murderess wore a fur coat. He was a mistake ready to be made. Juno wished that bothered him more. 

Something sharp in Ransom’s eye struck Juno like a match, and with his heart pounding in his chest and a fire in his gut, he cleared his throat. 

“Thought you said you looked bad,” Juno huffed. 

“I’ve hardly had time for my lipstick, darling,” Ransom protested. He laid a hand against the doorway like the doorway was put there just to hold him up, though he seemed to be putting far too much weight on his wrist to be comfortable.

“You and I must have different definitions of bad, then. Have a seat in my office,” Juno said before Ransom could undo him any further with those casual pet names that dripped from his lips like honey. “And close the door behind you.”

“Bossy, are we?” Ransom mused. He didn’t look like he minded it at all. 

“Just take a seat,” Juno snapped. 

Ransom punctuated Juno’s sentence with the click of his heels as he trailed into the office. The door behind him sounded like a nail being driven into a coffin lid. 

“My apologies, detective,” Peter said. His words ached with tragedy, though he had yet to release Juno from the dizzying spell of his curved lips and bared teeth. “I suppose you didn’t realize that was a compliment.”

“Not big on manners, huh?” Juno snorted. 

“It depends on the person, Detective Steel—” 

“Juno,” he cut off. He didn’t have the first idea of why he said it.

“Juno,” Ransom repeated. His posture, already straight, became somehow haughtier, and he let out a low chuckle like he had won something of great value with a cheating hand. “Well, to return to my former point, I don’t particularly dislike manners. It’s just that some people wear brutishness well.”

“What kind of people?” Juno snorted, raising an eyebrow. 

“The kind of gentlemen I wouldn’t mind discussing this case over dinner with,” Peter returned. He took a seat as he said those words, posture still unnaturally erect and gaze like a spotlight. There was something about Peter Ransom that made Juno’s skin crawl, though in a strangely pleasant way that might have just been the single bead of sweat running down the back of his neck. 

“What kind of lady do you take me for, Ransom?” Juno asked, as defensive as he was curious for an answer. The comment was like a jolt of electricity straight to the chest, and as Ransom fixed him with that bright, calculating stare, he couldn’t help but realize his palms had started sweating again. 

“I’m not proposing anything untoward, detective,” Ransom assured. 

“You’d better not be.”

“You just seem like the kind of lady I’d like to get to know better. Besides, I intend on being as hands-on with this case as possible,” Peter shrugged. 

“What?”

“I’m the closest thing you have to a witness. Face it, Juno,” Ransom said, looking far too pleased with himself as he did so. “You need me.”

“Well, maybe I’d be able to confirm that if you cut the shit and actually told me about the scene,” Juno huffed. 

“Fine. You want me to give another statement? I’ve been handing them out like alms all day,” Ransom complained. He crossed one knee over the other and did his best to look uninterested, though his eye still flicked back towards Juno as he spoke. 

Not just towards Juno, he noticed. His eyes, lips, and neck seemed to be the prime targets. 

“Just tell me,” Juno sighed, and opened his notebook. 

“Well, it was about—” he paused, gaze trailing off. “I’d say four in the morning. I got a phone call from my adoptive father, Mag Ransom. He said that he heard an odd sound from the hall, and that he was going to investigate. I told him not to, but he hung up anyway. So I did what I could to piece myself together and drove over to his home.”

“No chauffeur?” Juno interrupted. “I was under the impression you were some kind of socialite.”

“I’m not too wealthy to forget how to drive, Juno,” Ransom smiled. 

Juno made a note and nodded for him to continue with the story.

“I only recently moved away from my father, and he’s not particularly happy with that fact,” Ransom explained. “I have an allowance, though it’s fairly small. I’m trying to save most of it to move away from this city entirely.”

“My secretary said he’s not your biological dad,” Juno stopped him after a moment. 

“No. I was too young to remember my parents at the time, but according to Mag, he picked me off the street and raised me as his own,” Ransom said, an odd, shaky note emerging in his voice. “He’s the only family I’ve ever truly known.”

“So how did he react when you decided to move out?”

“Rather poorly. We had a slight falling out not too long after he received a terminal diagnosis for his cancer,” Ransom sighed. A stormy look crossed his face, eyebrows just a little too close and jaw just a little too stiff. “Unrelated to the disease, of course. Conflicting personalities don’t cease conflicting under unkind circumstances.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

Ransom shook his head. 

“His suffering has ended now,” he said. “I was his primary caretaker for his last few weeks of life. He wasn’t particularly declining, but he—”

Juno raised an eyebrow when Ransom broke off again. 

“He was a cruel man,” Ransom finished. “I had to move away, even if it was just to clear my own head. I didn’t cease my position as his caretaker, of course. I still did all the same things I usually would, I just—”

“Just needed a space that was yours and wasn’t his, right?” Juno supplied. “Fresh air.”

“Exactly. If I may ask, how did you—”

“Mom was a real piece of work,” Juno cut off, his sentence ending as if the words were chopped by a knife. Ransom didn’t press. 

“I returned to his home and found the front window broken into. I entered through the front door with the key I always use, and then I found him,” Ransom continued. A waver interjected at the end of his sentence, and though he swallowed, his eyes showed no sign of tears. 

“The body?”

Ransom nodded. 

“Describe the scene. I’ve got tissues, if you need them,” Juno offered, raising up the box. Ransom waved him away. 

“Dead, on the floor, but with no blood, no killer, and nothing taken. Father always kept a fully loaded gun on the wall as decoration, or as a threat to any paramours I might invite over,” Ransom tried and failed to chuckle. His gaze grew dark when he noticed Juno jot that down. “That gun was on the floor next to him.”

“Anything else?”

“There was a bag on the floor. It was rather large, and I had never seen it before, so I assumed it must have been the killer’s,” Ransom explained. “Oddly enough, it didn’t seem anything was actually taken from the mansion, just placed within the bag. I didn’t have much time to go through it, however. It dawned on me that the killer might not have had the time to take anything when I arrived, and might still be nearby.”

“And that’s when you called the police?”

“That’s when I called the police,” Ransom confirmed. 

“The boys in blue tell you anything?” Juno added, just as an afterthought. 

“Yes, actually,” Ransom sniffed indignantly. “They questioned me for hours and then told me that if I wasn’t going to cooperate with them, I might as well take my defense to you.”

Juno raised an eyebrow. 

“What do you mean by your defense?” he demanded. 

“They made quite the stunt of wanting me to be guilty, you know,” Ransom sighed. “I worked a very particular job in the war, however. We were specifically trained to keep our heads, and as such, they got nothing incriminating from me. They didn’t seem to care.”

“Nothing incriminating?”

“Of course not. Because there is nothing incriminating,” Ransom said quickly. “They were certainly searching for it, though.”

“And why do you think that is?” Juno pressed. 

“It’s an easy story, isn’t it? Young, disillusioned socialite with a strained relationship with his father kills him for his money,” Ransom sneered. “Isn’t it the conclusion you want, too?”

Ransom was right. It sounded easy, and worst of all, it sounded correct. Juno didn’t trust Peter Ransom as far as he could throw him, and the four year old scar in Juno’s throwing arm still ached when it got cold out. And Hyperion City was cold as hell. 

On the other hand, there were the HCPD to consider. The same damn cops who assigned him to his own brother’s murder after he got too mouthy about their use of deadly force. They’d long since proven themselves less trustworthy than a grieving socialite whose grin reeked of blood and sex and cash. 

“So you’re hiring me to prove you didn’t kill him,” Juno filled in. 

“Exactly.”

“What were you doing before your father called you?” Juno continued. “I’m gonna need a little bit more if they want you in the slammer that bad.”

“I was in bed,” Ransom started.

“Who beat the hell out of your neck, then, the HCPD?” Juno snorted. 

“You didn’t let me finish, Juno,” Ransom sighed, and for the first time, true worry crossed his face. “I was in bed with a man.”

“Oh.”

“Feel free to cast me from your office, if you wish.”

“I—” Juno felt his throat go dry. “Do you do that often?”

“Don’t get your hopes up yet, detective,” Ransom chuckled, though the laugh was far from easy. Juno recognized a fear response when he saw one. 

“Does the HCPD know?” Juno asked, gut twisting at the sight of Ransom’s deft fingers beginning to drum in quiet panic on his knee. 

“I’m afraid they might. Unfortunately, it seems wealth has a tendency of walking hand in hand with reputation,” Ransom smiled weakly. “So what’s your intent with me? Of course, it would be easiest just to turn the habitual criminal in—“ 

Juno cut him off before his voice could entirely go to lead. 

“I’m not turning you in.”

“Thought not, though I had my doubts,” Ransom said, trying and failing to hide the way relief sagged his shoulders. 

“Treat this as a favor,” Juno started, the corner of his mouth quirking. “One habitual criminal to another.” 

“You’re—“

“Living life with one hand tied behind my back,” Juno clarified. 

Ransom raised an eyebrow. For someone as practiced with his careful words and strategic displays of emotion, he certainly did a poor job of hiding excitement when it danced across his porcelain cheeks like a hand-painted blush on a doll. 

“Why, detective—“

“That doesn’t mean you’re off on paying me though. My rate’s twenty five bucks a day. Before you get pissy with me, that’s on the lower end.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it, darling” Ransom smiled. 

“Great. Don’t get too excited,” Juno started, tucking his notepad and pen into the breast pocket of his knee-length coat. “We’re going to the crime scene next, and I’m not letting you out of my sight.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, this is gonna be another chapter where a lot of gnarly stuff is gonna be mentioned once or twice in passing, but I'm putting everything under content warnings just in case! 
> 
> Content warnings for mistrust, one reference to sexual activity, discussions/investigations of murder, cadaver mention, gun violence mention, injury mention, police corruption, implied abuse/unhealthy family life, blood mention, surgery mention, burglary mention, past disease mention

11/12/49

I don’t trust this Ransom guy, even if I want to. And I really, really want to. 

As a rule, I don’t trust any client who offers to be my chauffeur for the day. With the wrong guy in the driver’s seat, that’s a one way ticket to a secondary location. There’s something off about him though, and I don’t think he just looks that way. He’s got teeth sharp enough to rip out someone’s throat, and he looks like he’d do it in a heartbeat if you really pushed him. 

I think eventually, I’ll have to do what I can to search his apartment and check his alibi. With the HCPD’s attitude towards him, it shouldn’t be that hard. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel wrong to do it though. We’ve got a kind of solidarity that makes business a little difficult when he’s not off the table as the killer yet. 

There’s something about his description of the crime scene that’s throwing me off. Ransom said the blood was cleaned when he got there, which twenty years of experience is telling me sounds like something the person who cleaned the blood would say. 

Maybe it’s his honesty with me, or maybe I’ve just gone soft, or maybe my grudge against the HCPD is getting the best of me. Either way, I can’t help but want to give him a chance, even as suspicious as he sounds. I keep thinking about what he said in my office about his guilt being the easy solution. I need to stop thinking about that. 

He’s driving us to the crime scene now, and he’s speeding at two in the afternoon. Weirdly enough, it probably helps his case that he’s driving like a bat out of hell in front of a detective. Usually the suspicious ones will just about break down if they go one or two over. Ransom has nearly doubled it. I will continue with this journal entry when I’m finished holding on for dear life. 

Apparently Ransom slows down in front of cop cars, which is good to know. Glad to know I’m not driving with a total menace to public safety. 

I didn’t expect him to laugh and make cracks the whole time, like it was some kind of joy ride. There’s a part of me that I’m really scared of that wants to bottle one of those laughs and keep it forever.

I hate to admit it, but I think he’s got a part of me wrapped around his little finger. Something about the way he moves and talks and looks at me like he wants to eat me alive. It’s enough to drive a lady wild. If I fuck this case up because of a pretty face though, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself. 

Juno Steel, Private Eye

“You’re writing an awful lot, detective,” Ransom mused, turning his gaze from the road long enough to flash Juno a grin. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“It’s classified,” Juno half-answered. 

“Oh, come now, if we’re going to work together, we ought to work together,” Ransom chided. 

“If you don’t wanna make friends with the electric chair, I’d try not to pry so much.”

“Touchy,” Ransom chuckled. “We’re almost there, my dear detective. Once we arrive at the scene, you can write all you want. This is a rather new car, however, and it would be a shame if you were to become ill in it.”

“New car, huh?” 

“Must everything I do be suspicious?” Ransom sighed. 

“You’re the leading suspect in a murder case, Ransom,” Juno started. “So that would be a yes.”

“Fine. It’s a new car because I stole it from an old, widowed woman whose children are all dead and whose husband left her for a twenty year old. I laughed all the while and wished I could have gotten it all on tape,” Ransom shot back, though there was no malice in his voice. “And I would have run over her too, but I had just gotten the paint done.”

“That had better have been a joke, Peter.”

“I’m beginning to think ‘Ransom’ sounds better from you, my dear detective,” Ransom winced. “The only person who ever called me Peter—well, you’re about to meet him.”

“Cop?”

“Cadaver,” Ransom corrected. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to dredge up any old memories.”

Ransom parked the car, then waved Juno off. 

“No apologies needed, my dear detective,” Ransom smiled, though his jaw was set. “You didn’t know.”

Peter jogged to the other side of the car to get Juno’s door for him before he could even lay a hand upon the handle. 

“It was cute the first time, Ransom, but I really don’t—” 

“Nonsense, detective,” Ransom interjected. “It’s only fair when welcoming you to my home.”

It was the kind of place made to look rich, even with a shattered front window. The gravel pathway led to daunting marble steps and more pillars than Juno could count on both hands. It wound through shrubbery and a lawn mowed so that the sun reflected its checkered pattern. The pure white of the door frame made the ivory of the marble look jaundiced, while the off-white of the marble made the pure white paint look sapped of life. The gilding on every piece of woodwork didn’t help either. Between the shattered window like a gaping eye and the columns like sharp, towering teeth, it looked about ready to bite through the neck of the first person who stepped inside, and Ransom looked like he knew it.

As much as the property dripped diamonds, Juno couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a maid or butler in sight. When he and Peter Ransom, the newly crowned man of the house, stepped inside the foyer, nobody came and offered to take his coat. He certainly didn’t mind. While he was sure there was a heater somewhere within the echoing hall, it didn’t seem to be doing its job. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but—” Juno started. “This is a hell of a place for the amount of staff you’ve got.”

“We don’t employ any,” Ransom explained, tone terse. “My father is a very private man, and prefers—preferred—to keep his failing health a family matter. Everything you’re seeing is contractor work. My father never met most of the people who did the landscaping.”

Strangest of all was the house’s impact on Ransom. While most of the socialites Juno knew seemed to either bathe in or utterly disregard their wealth, Ransom seemed to curl in on himself at the sight of it. His formerly shining grin faltered every time it tried to make an appearance, and a grotesque terror masquerading as grief threatened to contort his face at every turn. 

Usually, Juno would take this point in the investigation to start asking about the deceased. If the reaction of his son told him anything, however, he didn’t particularly need to. 

“There he is,” Ransom, for once, choked when they stepped just past the colonial blue and marbled white of the foyer into a library. “Was. They must have moved the body.”

Juno had seen a strange amount of bodies in libraries in his day, but never before had he seen a library so desolate. There was no carpeting, only white and black marble checkering over the floor like a chessboard. The shelves were packed with leatherbound medical texts bearing cold, uncaring titles, while skeletal models of various rodents and birds took up the empty spaces between them. 

A desk loomed amidst the shelves. It was oddly messy in comparison with the rest of the room, with a wide, cushioned piano bench behind the darkened oak and countless papers strewn about the top of it. Behind, a portrait of what seemed to be a haughty looking young girl with the same sharp features as Ransom peered over the rest of the room as if it were a piece of gum on the bottom of an expensive shoe. Ransom met its gaze with a silently smoldering glare. Juno’s eyes trailed lower, and found the empty gun display case just below the painting.

The chalk outline on the floor in front of the desk was what Juno was really there for. 

“Malarky,” he started in the form of a rough greeting to the red haired police officer halfway to the door. 

“Juno Steel,” Malarky snorted like it was some kind of joke. “How’s forced retirement treating you?”

“If you like your nose looking the way it does, I’d shut up right about now,” Juno snapped. “I assume you’ve met Peter Ransom.”

“Glad to see you’re keeping good company,” the cop said with a laugh like a retching dog. 

“Quit with the games. I just wanna hear about the cadaver.”

“Then why the hell didn’t you lead with that in the first place?” the cop jeered. 

“I’m here on business, Malarky. Tell me what I wanna hear and we can both pretend we never had to run into each other, okay?” Juno huffed. 

“Fine. Official cause of death was organ damage, for short. Four bullets to the abdomen, all accurate as hell. I’d say the shooter knew what he was doing,” Malarky conceded. “None missed. We looked for any stray bullets and didn’t find any.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Malarky said. He grabbed Juno by the shoulder before he could leave the room and met his eye with a stony glare. “And I mean it. If anybody hears I helped you, you’re a dead lady.”

The corner of Juno’s mouth twitched despite himself. 

“The lady sends his thanks,” Juno smirked, then gave Malarky’s shoulder a hefty pat that was halfway to a punch and sent him on his way. 

“Old colleague?” Ransom asked. 

“Yeah. Malarky’s a half-decent guy,” Juno started, eyes trained on the chalk outline on the floor. “Which makes him a shit cop.”

Ransom stayed quiet as Juno dropped to his knees at the outline’s side, wincing when they met unyielding stone below. 

“Do be more careful, detective—” Ransom began, though Juno cut him off when he put on his gloves and picked up the antique gun at the outline’s side. 

“Did this come from that case?” Juno asked, gesturing to the empty stand on the wall with the gun. 

“Yes. It’s a family heirloom, even if not by blood. My great-great grandfather’s gun from some old war or another. I get my name from him, actually,” Peter explained, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet as he spoke. 

The distraction of the weapon seemed somewhat good for his mood, as did the familiar space with distinct things to do. While Juno continued to examine the gun, Ransom pulled the nearest medical tome off the shelf, flipped to a bookmarked page, and tried to force himself to read. 

“Medical books, huh? Was your dad some kind of doctor?” Juno started as he flicked the chamber of the gun open. 

“No,” Ransom sighed, flipping the book shut. Juno caught sight of his page as he closed the book, but discarded the thought. He doubted mastectomies had much to do with the case. “Both my father and I have suffered from a bouquet of strange medical issues. He liked to stay well-read on the topic.”

“Like what?”

“Father’s cancer of course, and—” Ransom broke off. It sounded like his throat had gone dry mid-sentence. “After I returned home from the war, I needed a complicated series of surgeries in response to a medical condition.”

“Which was?” Juno prompted. 

For the first time all afternoon, Ransom’s gaze turned to ice. Despite the silent danger of his eyes, the look was undercut by a gloved hand subconsciously running along one of his ribs, as if remembering where a scalpel had pierced him years ago. He even winced at one odd touch in memory of the pain. 

“None of your concern. A deeply painful and traumatic measure, I assure you,” he returned, as businesslike as Juno had ever known him to be. After a moment, however, he sighed, and that dangerous look disappeared from his eye and softened into something as fond as it was sad. “My younger sibling suffered a similar ailment.”

“The one in the portrait?”

Ransom nodded. “Went off to war as a nurse and never came home.”

“I’m sorry,” Juno sighed, laying the gun down on his knee to look back up at Ransom, who looked as if he might be ill. “That painting’s your spitting image. It must be hard.”

“You have no idea,” Ransom all but spat.

“If it’s any consolation, I lost my twin brother. Kinda hard to look your reflection in the eye after that,” Juno tried and failed to chuckle. 

“The war?”

Juno shook his head.

“Worse. My mother.”

“If I can ever get my hands on wine, I suppose we’ll have to share a drink to siblings missed and parents dealt with,” Ransom smiled mirthlessly. “What do you make of that gun? You’ve been staring at it for quite the while.”

“Well, I’ve got a decent profile of the killer,” Juno sighed. 

“Oh, do tell.”

“Well they didn’t like your father, judging from the number of bullet holes. We’re probably looking at a good shooter, maybe a war vet. He’s been shot too well by too shitty of a gun for it to be anybody else,” Juno started. “And they had to know him to know how to clean up this floor, so they probably knew their way around the place.”

“Quite perceptive, detective,” Ransom mused. 

“And whoever it is has a bullet lodged in them somewhere.”

Ransom raised an eyebrow. 

“Beg pardon?”

“They didn’t find any stray bullets and Mag was shot four times. There are five bullets missing, and you said he always kept the gun full. That means the perpetrator came in here with that bag—” Juno paused to gesture towards the open velvet bag Ransom had described earlier. “Your father saw them, and I’m assuming, shot. There was a struggle, unless the desk normally looks like that, and then the perpetrator shot him four more times and fled without the bag.”

Ransom’s mouth fell open.

“Didn’t go to a hospital, though. If he went to a hospital, he’d already be in jail,” Juno added. 

“Why, detective—” 

Juno snorted, though he couldn’t help either the smile or the flush to his cheeks at how genuinely impressed Ransom looked. 

“I know, I’m a genius, the best you’ve ever seen. I’ve heard it all already,” he joked. 

“Oh, hush,” Ransom laughed with a roll of his eyes. “Any other clues you’ve found, Mister Holmes?”

“Shut up,” Juno snorted. 

“I’m afraid you’ll have to make me, detective,” Ransom mused. As tempting as that sounded, Juno knew he was on thin ice with the HCPD and they’d have his head if he contaminated a crime scene with a regretfully pretty suspect. 

“Maybe some other time,” Juno huffed. “I’m not done looking this place over yet.”

“Your funeral,” Ransom sighed, as if Juno’s temporary rejection had shattered his heart in two. He strode over to Juno’s side to offer him a hand up. Juno took it and pretended a fire didn’t flicker to life in his chest when he felt the disagreeing fabrics of their gloves rub together while his feet struggled to find the spinning ground below.

“So what’s with the piano bench?” Juno asked when his head came down from the clouds and when Ransom had released him from the prison of his gaze. 

“It looks like he began sleeping at his desk recently. We had his bed moved to the ground floor when the staircase became too much, but I was unaware he had stopped leaving his study altogether,” Ransom thought aloud. 

“And if there’s no help, who moved the bed?” Juno asked as he began to rifle through the drawers. 

“An old friend of mine owed me a favor,” Ransom explained. “He visited Hyperion recently in the hopes of seeing me.”

“An old friend, or an old friend?”

“Hardly any of your business, detective,” Ransom sniffed. 

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t get fried,” Juno shot back. “Everything’s my business.”

“Fine. A former lover. It ended poorly, but not so poorly that the one person I knew in the city might not help my ailing father,” Ransom snapped. “Are you happy, detective?”

“Haven’t been in thirty eight years,” Juno shrugged. “Weird question here. It’s gonna sound stupid.”

“Go on.”

“Was your dad in the mafia?” 

Ransom burst out laughing, bent double as the sound rang through the air like the ringing of wedding bells. Juno tried and failed to kill the thing in his chest that clenched. 

“No,” Ransom finally breathed, still clutching at his side. His smile faltered into a barely-hidden grimace as he continued. “Why do you ask?”

Juno held up a note that lay atop the desk, bearing a date, time, and address he knew all too well as a speakeasy turned bar turned mafia front. 

“Looks like they’ve requested an audience.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeehaw!! Please continue to conspiracy board I'm loving the feedback so much. I definitely peppered in a few extra clues just for the reader like. five minutes before posting this
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I will aggressively journal in your general direction
> 
> Yell at me/theorize with me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was SAUCY i had way too much fun writing this one. Again, going a LITTLE too hard with the content warnings, just in case! anything with a mentioned next to it is pretty mild or only comes up in one or two lines
> 
> Content warnings for government/police corruption, bribery mention, mention of injury, mention of espionage, betrayal, attempted poisoning, attempted murder, knives/guns with death threats, organized crime, gun violence mention, murder/death mention, kidnapping, implied torture, blood mention, sexual activity mention

11/12/49

Ransom doesn’t look like he’s walking around with a bullet hole anywhere, though I can’t be sure. I guess I’d have to get him out of that suit first, but that would feel too much like giving in. 

I’m not an idiot. That’s what he’s been trying to do ever since I first heard his voice on the phone. I wish I minded that more. 

I can’t exonerate him with what I have right now. He said he had some kind of classified war job in his interview, probably an engineer or a sniper or something. That would make him a good shot. He doesn’t like his father, but he seems to trust him, with what he said about how private the family was. He was more scared than angry when we went in, so I don’t really know what to think. 

I don’t think that’s enough to clear him as a suspect. I’ve seen my fair share of cases in my time, and I’d take angry over scared any day. Anger’s one thing, but when fear snaps, it gets messy. Ransom looked nervous from the moment we got to the mansion, but didn’t get any worse around the crime scene. I don’t know if that makes this look better or worse for him. 

I can’t say that Peter Ransom isn’t a killer. I don’t doubt there’s still blood on his hands from the war. He seems like a pretty smart guy though, so I don’t see why he could have just waited until his father kicked the bucket. Even then, he doesn’t seem completely sure how he feels about Mag. You don’t usually kill someone if you’re not sure about it.

Ransom’s proven to be nothing but an enigma. He drove back to his apartment to change for dinner, even if we’re probably gonna be served poison drinks and a knuckle sandwich a piece. He wasn’t kidding when he said he was living in a shoehole to save and run. I’m surprised the door stayed on its hinges when he opened it. 

I’m not dumb enough to think he’s just being nice. He’s been trying to get a date ever since we met. I just wish I knew what kind of angle Ransom was working with, especially if I’m the one who’s gonna try to exonerate him. I don’t think I’m that attractive, and I don’t believe in love at first sight, so this is a hell of a bad look for him. 

It’s a little unethical to bed a client, but that would give me a chance to look him over for bullet holes. And hell, I don’t think he would mind me looking. 

Juno Steel, Private Eye

“My, detective,” Ransom chortled from across the table. “Working on the next great American novel?”

“Your case,” Juno looked up from his notepad and snorted. 

“Not much to go on, unfortunately,” Ransom sighed, resting an elbow on the table of their booth and his cheek in his palm. “I don’t suppose you found something to entirely exonerate me when the HCPD inevitably decide I’m enjoying my freedom too much.”

“Not unless I check you over for bullet holes,” Juno returned. 

Ransom raised a penciled brow. 

“Quite forward of you, detective,” he smiled, teeth glinting even in the low and hazy light of the bar. Juno felt his heart stop, only to resume when the moment was shattered by a pair of loud and likely already drunk patrons crashing into the booth behind him. 

“Well, we know the killer was shot,” Juno huffed. 

“And I haven’t had the time to go to a hospital. Shouldn’t that exonerate me?” 

“I wish,” Juno sighed. “Plenty of doctors in this city will take care of you out of a backroom if you pay them enough. You look pretty okay though, so I don’t really know what to think.” 

“Pretty okay, hm? Not my highest compliment, but I’ll take it,” Ransom chuckled. “It means the world from my favorite grouchy detective.”

“Yeah? And how many of those do you know?”

“Semantics, darling,” Ransom waved him away with a ring-clad hand that glittered in the lamplight like a jeweled beetle. 

“You seem pretty damn relaxed for a guy who walked into a trap,” Juno pressed. “I told you, you didn’t have to come.”

“The last thing I want is the only lady who thinks I’m innocent walking into a trap without protection,” Ransom shrugged. 

Juno snorted. 

“You’re not protecting me.”

“Safety in numbers, my dear detective,” Ransom mused. “Besides—”

“Yeah?” Juno pressed when Peter broke off, seizing his bottom lip between a pair of impossibly sharp teeth as he found himself lost in thought. 

“In the war, I was a double agent stationed in Italy. I have certain knowledge that might be useful when we find ourselves in a compromising position,” Ransom admitted.

“When?”

“Juno, you didn’t really think we would walk out of here unscathed, did you? I thought I hired a professional,” Ransom chuckled. 

The waiter arrived before Juno could respond. To Juno’s surprise, he offered to bring water, rather than a pair of knuckle sandwiches with a side of twenty stitches. Even if he knew the worst had yet to come at the end of dinner, a low-stakes meal bored him. That’s probably how he ended up in a quiet booth for two across from a man who might have just murdered his father, a stubborn smile prying the corner of his mouth up as he reached for the glass. 

Ransom caught him by the wrist before he could do anything more than lay a finger on the edge of the cup. Peter jumped when icy water splashed against his wrist, wiping the bared skin on a napkin and doing his best to sop all of it off the table. 

“Jesus, Ransom, didn’t think you were that jumpy,” Juno said. 

“Smell the glass, detective,” Ransom returned, still scrambling around to ensure every last drop had been wiped away. 

Juno did as he was told, a hand waving over the glass so he wouldn’t have to put his face over it. He winced at a smell like bitter almonds that seemed to fester the moment it hit his nose, and he pushed the glass to the far end of the table. 

“Shit,” he wheezed. “What the hell’s in the tap water?”

“Cyanide,” Ransom replied coolly. “I assume you’ve walked on their bad side before?”

Juno glanced between his glass and the unnaturally calm man across the table in disbelief. Ransom, who had twisted his handkerchief to the point of tearing when within his own household, even when no longer haunted by the spectre of his father, barely flinched at the threat of poisoning. His face was a mask of calm, as if the whole near-death experience debacle had merely been a passing event of interest, but he was slipping back into boredom once more. 

There was something enchanting about the calmness of that face. It was like staring into a void of some kind, be it the ocean or the endless, light-polluted sky that stretched overhead by night. Juno could stare at it for hours, memorizing the curve of his cheek or the line of a once-broken nose corrected in surgery. 

Instead, he forced himself to break his stupor and reply. 

“Yeah. I’m the reason their old boss is in jail,” Juno explained. 

“Why the sour tone, my dear?” Ransom pressed, the pet name dripping from his lips like honey. Juno wished his gut hadn’t twisted in reply. 

“It’s what got me kicked out of the HCPD. Turns out he and the commissioner were old pals,” Juno sighed. 

Ransom raised an eyebrow, as if corruption on such a level was anything new. Juno wondered if the rest of the world saw the city in anything more than his own inky grayscale vision, or if Ransom was just new in town. 

The way Juno saw it, Hyperion City was an old looking glass, shattered in a million pieces and promising years and years of bad luck to every sucker unfortunate enough to throw a glance into it. Sure, people went to work, got married, raised kids, had pets, the whole white-collar, white picket fence life. They lived in tacky little boxes in suburbs a twenty minute drive away, and they all lived the lives they were promised after the war without seeing a speck of Hyperion’s underbelly. 

Juno was acquaintances with a speakeasy-turned-gentlemen's club owner who sold stolen art on the side, and he still had a friend who worked with the police. He considered one profession the scum of the earth and the other a decent place to get your liquor. 

That didn’t mean he was going to give up on the city for a moment, however. Even if the cops would fabricate evidence and the courts would let the innocent fry, one decent person doing his best to save a few people made all the hell Juno put up with worth it, he supposed. Even if he debated getting out of bed every morning and every night, counted broken ribs instead of sheep, it was worth it. He had to keep telling himself that. 

On the other hand, there was something seductive in Ransom’s dream for the future. He could see himself as a Private Eye in some other city, far away from where the cops and the mob walked hand in hand in their desire to see Juno Steel six feet under. He’d catch cheating partners and find missing teens and go after a lost cat or two when all was said and done. People might flinch when they saw the scars on his face, as they were never used to seeing people milling about their city bearing such marks. In Hyperion City, broken noses were a dime a dozen. 

Maybe, if he permitted himself, he could find someone to share his dingey little apartment with, even if just to keep his bed warm for a while. He could slow down and focus on something other than work. He’d come home to a house smelling like a home-cooked meal, or hell, he’d race to get home first and make it himself. He didn’t care what kind of person took up that little space in the little kitchen that occupied his dreams. Ideally, somebody taller than him who didn’t mind being the big spoon and who, preferably, smelled nice. 

When he pictured that scene in his mind’s eye, he tried to pretend that figure in the kitchen didn’t look an awful lot like Peter Ransom. 

“You haven’t touched your water,” the waiter said, crashing Juno’s train of thought. 

“I—”

“My companion would prefer wine, if you would be much obliged,” Ransom interrupted. “Isn’t that right?”

The waiter left without a single word, but Juno could piece together a couple things he wanted to say from the glare contorting his face like a funhouse mirror. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Juno shot under his breath. 

“Buying us time, my dear,” Ransom shrugged, as if partaking in a normal conversation. “I’ve been enjoying my evening with you thus far, and I would quite hate for it to end so quickly. He’ll be gone for a bit longer anyway. It takes precious time to poison a drink, you know.”

“You don’t seem too upset by all this,” Juno snorted. 

“You’ve found yourself in peculiar company, my dear detective,” Ransom chuckled. “I’ve lived a storied life. I must tell you of it some time.”

“Why not now?”

“Off the record,” Ransom clarified, though from the way his mouth curled into a hungry grin and his eyes flickered like a newly lit candle, Juno got the feeling this was a story he wanted to hear. 

“I don’t know if I can agree to that. Will it help the case?” he implored anyway.

“Not at all, unless you consider postwar medical procedures to be a testament of character,” Ransom all but smirked. 

“What, your nose job?”

“Detective, it was all but shattered,” Nureyev scoffed. 

“Sure,” Juno snorted. 

“Marvelous. Your place or mine?” Ransom asked, confirming every single one of Juno’s suspicions. “I wouldn’t mind a drink or two after we’re finished getting the pulp beaten out of us by mobsters. Perhaps, if conversation runs too long, I might let you stay the night.”

“Your wine, sir,” the waiter interjected, offering a bottle. 

The title made Ransom sit up in his seat, face halfway between a grin and a sneer as he glanced over the label. 

“Swill. Send it back,” he waved the waiter off, then turned back to Juno as if nothing had happened. “So what do you say, detective?”

“I’d say that you’re setting me up for a hell of a conflict of interest,” Juno chuckled. 

“Oh, dream a little,” Ransom huffed. “You wouldn’t be the only dirty cop on the case.”

“Fine,” Juno conceded. “But we’re leaving it at drinks.”

That didn’t seem to put Ransom off at all, still smiling his infuriating smile and resting his chin upon his hand the way a king regards a ball and scepter. 

“I wouldn’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” he said. 

“Sure,” Juno returned, trying to force his heart not to pound at the proposition from a man who very well could have killed his father. The part of him he tried to shut up most of the time murmured something about checking for bullet wounds. “I’m gonna run to the bathroom to powder my nose. Don’t get poisoned while I’m up.”

“Anything for you, darling, though I must say, that is quite the stiff order,” Ransom joked. 

Juno stood, only to find himself held back when he noticed Ransom had taken him by the hand. He raised an eyebrow, confusion quieted when Ransom pressed those impossibly soft, brightly rouged lips to the back of his hand. 

“So you might keep a piece of me with you when you’re away,” Ransom explained, one long and slender finger tapping atop the waxy red seal of that kiss. Juno felt his heart pound with every tap. 

“Thanks,” he somehow managed to choke, then turned on his heel and remembered how to walk. 

The fact of the matter was that Juno left his nose powder at home. The two drunkenly murmuring voices from the booth behind him sounded all too familiar, and he had a feeling he would die before ever kicking the instinct to snoop. Given the life expectancies of Private Eyes in Hyperion City, he would probably croak long before then anyway. 

He was halfway to looking lost in search of the bathroom when he got a decent view of the men. One looked like a toad, while the other looked like a weasel. Worst of all, Juno recognized them both. 

The toad on the left side of the booth was District Attorney Mason, while the weasel on the right was Judge Hollis. Both up for re-election. Both looking for an easy, scandalous case they could really sink their teeth into and rip. Whoever got caught in that storm was going to come out smelling like barbecue, and Juno staunchly decided it wouldn’t be him. 

Juno was halfway to turning on his heel when he heard a name that made him freeze. 

“This Ransom boy’s a piece of work,” Mason laughed. “Promiscuous as hell, if I’m hearing it right.”

“Think he’ll crack Steel?” Judge Hollis snorted. Juno hadn’t realized he had gone white knuckled until one of them popped, sounding like a gunshot to him in the quiet of the corner. The District Attorney and Judge seemed not to have noticed, however. 

“If the dirt I’ve heard on Steel is right, I’d say so. Police hate him though. Half of it’s probably made up,” Mason shrugged. “I just know he tried to bust me on a bribe or two. He’s got a stick up his ass, I’m telling you. There ain’t a politician in Hyperion who hasn’t taken a little cash.”

“I don’t care, so long as Steel finds him distracting. Hell, I don’t care if they even actually like each other. I just want him to look like a real piece of shit for trying to defend Ransom at all.”

“The HCPD isn’t being any help, so he’s probably gonna feel pity for the kid. Won’t that be a pretty picture when the rest of the investigation finds what we planted,” Mason chortled. 

Hollis shushed him, even if he too was poorly restraining a cackle. 

“Ears everywhere, Chuck,” Hollis hissed. “Why the hell did you pick this damn bar?”

“Least likely place to find Steel,” Mason returned. 

“Not a bad point. Whaddya say we drink a toast to Steel’s client in the hot seat and his career down the drain?”

Juno felt his breath freeze in his throat. Moving as little as possible, he reached for his golf pencil and notepad and started scribbling down the conversation as it continued. 

“I’ll drink to that,” Mason all but cackled. Juno wheeled around and hurried off when he heard a pair of glasses clink together. 

The longer he looked lost, the less they would suspect he’d heard anything, he told himself, though Hollis and Mason had spoken as if they hadn’t seen him at all. If they had, Juno would probably have a hole where the skin between his eyes used to be. 

Juno took the long route back to his booth. While his gut still twisted at the idea of leaving his client alone in a place that was hostile on two fronts, he knew it would be best if Hollis and Mason didn’t see him sit back down. So with their words still ringing in his ears and his notepad clutched in his pocket like a lifeline, he turned a few extra corners and made a point of getting himself lost. 

He must have ended up in a server’s hallway, for the wood paneling and black and white photographs of bar founders and family members and movie stars who had eaten there dropped off altogether in favor of wallpaper so dark that Juno couldn’t discern the color. At the very least, he knew the hall was empty. He stopped his furious pacing. He shut his eyes. He took a deep breath. He whirled around when he heard the cocking of a gun behind his head. 

“Customers aren’t allowed back here,” a shadow with the voice of his waiter growled. 

“My mistake, halfway to the men’s room, got lost, found my way, got lost again, so sorry, won’t happen again,” Juno reeled off, voice flat. 

“A jokester, huh?” 

“Yeah, I do my best standup with a gun to my head. Good for job interviews. They like it when you say you can work well under pressure,” Juno shot back. “You gonna lead me back to my booth at gunpoint or what?”

“You were supposed to be dead half an hour ago.”

Juno snorted. 

“This is how I know you’re not actually gonna shoot. If I was supposed to be dead half an hour ago, you wouldn’t be making me any later. I’ve got a hot date with Saint Peter, so you’d better not be holding me up,” he said. Even in the dark, he saw the waiter’s jaw clench. 

“If you like your head in one piece, I’d keep your mouth shut,” he snapped. 

“And if you like that tongue of yours inside your head, I’d try to keep a leash on it,” another voice interjected. The low light of the kitchen flashed as it reflected off a knife that seemed to be pulled from the darkness itself.

“Ransom—” Juno started, though he was shushed by both his client and his attacker before he could get out another word. 

“Who the hell are you?” the waiter choked, his next words sputtering off as Ransom’s knife started to get friendly with his carotid. 

“I want you to give me your gun, and then we’ll have this conversation like gentlemen. This is a new shirt, and the fact of the matter is that my dry cleaner would just about skin me if I brought her a number soaked in your blood,” Ransom continued, voice as cold as it was easy. 

All the while, those bright eyes continued to fix Juno with a gaze that held some sort of meaning he couldn’t quite comprehend. Something dangerous flashed in those eyes, like the glint of kitchen light off his nine inch blade. When the waiter lowered his gun and held it out behind him for Ransom to take, Ransom’s blood red grin slashed across his face. 

For just a moment, Juno could see the killer the HCPD made Ransom out to be. He looked like a cat mere seconds from seizing a baby bird in its jaws, primed to snap its neck and drop the bloody corpse down at Juno’s doorstep. 

“Ransom, you don’t have to kill him,” Juno protested, feeling just as strangled as the poor middleman with a knife to his neck. 

“Darling, you misinterpret my intentions,” Ransom chuckled. 

He readjusted his grip on his knife. Juno should have known something far worse was coming next, but it didn’t hit him until he was staring down a barrel of a gun and straight into Peter Ransom’s face. 

“You—” 

“Me,” Ransom shrugged, pulling the knife back from the waiter’s throat as he did so. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“I trusted you, goddammit!” Juno started, but before he could say anything else, Ransom shot him a glare. 

“Hush, Juno. The adults are speaking,” he sneered, turning his gaze back to the waiter and holding out one bejeweled hand. Juno caught sight of a gold ring with a square black gem set within it, and cursed himself for not finding it odd amongst the silver and pearls that adorned the rest of his client. “You should have known to recognize a superior. I don’t like to draw knives on my family, but I can make an excuse for traitorous ones.”

“What did I do?” the waiter sputtered. “The boss said he wanted Steel dead if he ever showed his ugly mug in here again.”

“Oh, now that’s just unfair,” Ransom chuckled, moving the barrel of the gun just below Juno’s chin so he might bring his face into the light. “I’ve always found Detective Steel quite the sight for sore eyes.”

“Shut up,” Juno choked, something hot and dry welling in his throat that he forced himself to swallow around anyway. 

For a moment, Ransom’s face faltered, as if hearing the waver in his voice had made something in that cold black heart of his snap. Juno could have sworn he saw a silent plea for forgiveness in those eyes, though he told himself it was just wishful thinking. There was a kind of peace when hope died. 

“To my former point, however, your boss might have told you he wanted Juno Steel dead,” Ransom continued. “But I’m afraid he forgot to check with me first. I think he has plenty to offer us alive and talking, though I’m afraid we might have to find a way to loosen that sharp tongue of his.”

“You bastard,” Juno breathed. 

Ransom didn’t respond, merely holding his hand out to the waiter, who took it in both of his own and pressed a kiss to the ring. From his facial expression, Ransom might have been looking at a piece of gum on the bottom of a rather expensive shoe. 

“Don’t knock him out. I don’t want any head trauma,” Ransom instructed. “Take him away and leave him restrained. I’m going to go gather my effects and powder my nose, but I want a word alone with the detective when I’m done. Make it quick. I’ve had a very long day. Do you think you could do that for me? Or will I have to tell your boss that you disobeyed his favorite nephew?”

Juno wondered if he’d have enough time to make his peace with God. With Ransom eyeing him like he wondered what color his kidneys were, he had a feeling he’d be luckier if he died fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I'm sorry 2) no i'm not 3) i'm not because nureyev is inarguably hotter when he's not being nice
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll *insert threat here*!
> 
> find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or follow me on twitter @withane22 !!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a BIG BOY chapter im SO EXCITED Y'ALL! 
> 
> Content warnings for blood, injury, kidnapping, betrayal, espionage mention, background organized crime, surgery mention, blackmail mention, minor death threats, escape, foreplay, mild sexual activity, gun violence

Juno couldn’t remember when he started bleeding. 

He remembered kicking and screaming all the way down to whatever dingey liquor basement they threw him in, still giving the waiter hell as his hands were bound to a stiff, wood-backed chair. He tried the ropes again and again in the hopes that they might budge, but all he got for his trouble was a bloody wrist. 

When he finally registered the darkened room where he was probably going to die, he couldn’t help but feel like the rapidity of his breaths and heartbeat were some futile effort to make the most of whatever remaining life he had in him. He couldn’t blame his organs. He’d be doing the same, if he weren’t tied to a chair in the cellar of a bar. 

Juno knew who was coming down the stairs from sound alone. He supposed he would have to. The single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling like the baiting light of an anglerfish barely illuminated half the room, let alone the shadowy corner Juno had found himself crammed into. He gave one final, futile squirm. The ropes didn’t budge. 

Peter Ransom, the enigma he’d had the misfortune of developing a soft spot for, sidled into the room like he owned the place. From the way the waiter had panicked at the sight of his ring, Juno had a sneaking suspicion that he might. 

“Who the hell are you?” Juno spat when Ransom came into the range of the light. He tasted blood, and felt it begin to run from the corner of his mouth when he spoke, but pressed on anyway. 

“Oh, Juno,” Ransom chuckled like it was some kind of inside joke Juno wasn’t meant to get. “Have I proven that forgettable already? Such a pity, my dear. I thought we might have had something.”

“What’s really happening here?”

“Once a detective, always a detective, I see,” Ransom sighed, though his face refused to budge from its blood red smirk. “Even in death.”

“You said you weren’t going to kill me.”

“Not yet,” Ransom shrugged. He turned his head and attention back to the unseen stairway.

“What’s upstairs that you’re so worried about?” Juno pressed, if just to keep his fingers on his hand for a few minutes longer. Ransom’s knife glinted almost as cruelly as the iron just behind his glinting eyes. 

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Ransom started, turning away entirely. “Antonio, you know how I feel about my privacy. If you enjoy having an unbroken nose, I would close that door and leave me to my own devices.”

The cellar door groaned shut, leaving the faint buzz of the bar upstairs dampened. Juno could hear the guard pacing away nonetheless. Ransom watched the ceiling all the while, as if picturing the floorplan in his head and trying to figure out where the guard might have gone. 

“At least fucking tell me why I’m here,” Juno growled. “If you’re gonna kill me anyway, I just wanna know why.”

“Shh,” Ransom murmured absentmindedly, eyes still on the ceiling. 

“Oh, so you threaten me at gunpoint to get me somewhere we can talk, and then you won’t let me talk? I see how it is,” Juno shot. 

Ransom didn’t reply, merely mouthing a silent count to ten before turning his attention back to Juno. His gaze was strange, more like a curious dog than it was a man intending to torture him. 

“Are your hands bound or handcuffed?” 

“What?”

“I’m asking the questions here,” Ransom said, just a little too loud. 

“Rope,” Juno returned. “Why?”

Ransom strode over and sank his blade between Juno’s wrists before Juno could get out another word. He tumbled forward, trying his best to scramble out of the wreckage of the ropes and as far away from Ransom as he could manage, but found himself trapped. There was an arm around his chest and a hand on his wrists and a head on his shoulder, but with his heart still pounding and his mind still racing, all Juno knew to do was kick and squirm. 

When Juno finally stopped trying to throw Ransom off of him, he realized all he had been struggling against was a hug. The hand on his wrists was merely rubbing circulation back into them and ensuring he hadn’t bled too badly. Ransom broke away only to give his hand a comforting squeeze, continuing to murmur assurances that he was okay until Juno’s pulse began to steady. Juno thought he caught snippets of phrases like “darling” and “my love” and “breathe,” but he couldn’t quite be sure. 

“Ransom—“ Juno finally started when air found its way back to his lungs. “What’s going on?” 

“I’m so sorry,” Ransom all but gasped into his shoulder. 

Juno was too stunned to respond. Ransom kept talking anyway. 

“Juno, my darling, I never meant for you to get hurt,” Ransom murmured, voice muffled into Juno’s coat. 

“What?” Juno asked. The noise came out choked when Ransom hugged him unexpectedly tighter. 

“Keep your voice down, dear, they still think I’m killing you,” Ransom whispered. “I acquired the ring when I was stationed in Italy. That’s why I went back to the apartment in the first place. When I knew I was heading into enemy territory, I knew it would be best to be dressed for it.” 

“I thought you said you went back to change,” Juno hissed. 

“Can’t I do both?” Ransom chuckled. 

Juno found himself gradually relaxing, even crumpled into an awkward embrace propped halfway between the front of a chair and the floor. Ransom stroked his hair with a gentle kind of purpose. Juno thought he might be able to get used to a touch like that, even if his heart was still pounding at the memory of his face on the other side of the single dark eye of a gun’s barrel. 

“I didn’t know they’d hurt you. I’ll get retribution for you, if you’d like,“ Ransom offered, pulling away just enough to get a look at a bleeding bruise just above Juno’s eyebrow. The dangerous flicker returned to his eye once more, but there was something protective about it between the way his face had fallen and his hand roamed over Juno’s cheek, gentle as the brush of the wind. 

“I’m fine,” Juno returned. 

“You’re bleeding terribly, Juno,” Ransom protested. 

“I’ve bled worse.” 

Ransom sighed, then carefully laid Juno out upon the floor when it seemed his arms could bear no more dead weight. 

“When’d you get so sweet on me?” Juno murmured. The ghost of a smirk flashed across Ransom’s face, even as he began to glance around for an exit. 

“I always have been, my dearest.” 

“Funny way of showing it,” Juno snorted. “I usually don’t get held at gunpoint until the second date.” 

“I was saving your life,” Ransom glared affectionately. “I planned on telling you my emergency plan eventually, but the waiter got to you first.” 

“Oh,” Juno murmured. When he couldn’t grasp a single other word to say and the floor started getting a little too cold, he tried to sit up, even if a near-broken rib or two protested. 

“Careful,” Ransom muttered. Even as Juno found a steady seat with his back against the wooden chair, Ransom’s feather-light touch ghosted along his side all the way up, just in case he might fall. Juno pretended a shiver didn’t trail behind the touch like a shadow. 

“Thanks for that.”

“I think I owe you a few truths, Juno,” Ransom sighed after a moment’s pause. Juno wondered if this was the first time he had ever heard Ransom’s voice be anything less than performative. For once, he saw the man, rather than the mask, and he couldn’t help but feel his heart clench at the sight of him. 

Peter Ransom slouched his shoulders and wrang his thin, pale hands when he became anxious. He looked into Juno’s eyes for comfort and looked into Juno’s wounds with disdain. When he felt compelled to stand and leave his companion to get up, he kissed Juno’s forehead in farewell. 

“Ransom,” Juno breathed, still too dazed to think of the first thing to say. 

“Peter Nureyev,” his client corrected. “My true name is Peter Nureyev. You might as well call me it.” 

“That supposed to mean something to me?” 

Peter Nureyev tried his best to quiet a laugh. 

“Not unless you’re intending to kill me,” he chuckled. 

He stood, slower than Juno would have expected, and paused at an odd angle. After a silent moment of gritting his teeth, whatever crack in his veneer of calm healed over and he turned back to give Juno a hand up. 

Juno took it, too preoccupied with his own wincing to care too much about whatever was happening with Ransom, or Nureyev, or whoever the hell he was. 

“Why the name change?” Juno asked, voice still hushed as Nureyev started to hurry him towards a backdoor exit. 

“It’s quite the story, detective,” Nureyev began. Juno still felt one hand on his lower back for stability, even if he felt his legs worked well enough to make it up a set of shitty cellar stairs. “I must tell you it in full someday.”

“Why don’t we get out of this cellar and you can tell me right now?”

“Ransom is my adoptive father’s last name. I never took it until after the war,” Nureyev started to explain once they emerged from the dank cellar to the cool haze of night. 

Nureyev paused at the top of the stairs to turn to Juno and offer him an arm. 

“I can walk on my own,” Juno said, even if his ribs and the various brass-knuckle bruises on his chest and arms screamed otherwise. 

“You might be able to, but you don’t look like you’re enjoying it,” Nureyev returned. 

“Fine.”

Juno stuck his arm out with comedic gusto. Nureyev kissed his hand, right atop the other red smudge he had left what felt like hours before, then took him by the arm and continued walking back to his car. 

“The government advised me to uproot and change my name once I returned home, but with my father’s failing health, I stayed with him,” Nureyev continued. “I changed my name and hoped no old ghosts would haunt me. I wasn’t so lucky, unfortunately. I gave my new address to a gentleman I was seeing before the war. I see now that I shouldn’t have bothered, as a somewhat messy and deeply painful parting followed suit.” 

“I’m sorry,” Juno said, just because it felt like the only right thing to say. 

“It’s been quite some time, Juno,” Nureyev smiled, a closed-lip look of warmth, rather than a seductive grin. Juno was sure his heart would skip a beat either way. 

He didn’t even have it in him to protest when Nureyev picked him up and carried him the last few feet to the car, setting him down like he might shatter any second. Juno hadn’t been held in a very long time, let alone carried or doted on like that. 

Juno couldn’t help the way his gaze locked on Nureyev’s face when he got into the car and started it. 

His eyes were alight with the glow of the street lamps all around as he drove, weaving a story about his job in the war. Nureyev talked of the men of power he had to exploit, gangsters and politicians alike. He even spent a few years there after the war, just to make sure his transition back to the states didn’t seem that obvious. He spoke of men he’d befriended and betrayed, a few he’d blackmailed, two or three he’d slept with, and one he’d kissed. All the while, Peter’s face barely restrained a wistful grin, as if speaking of boyhood escapades. 

Juno listened to that voice, as low and sweet as siren song. The words and sounds danced past his lips and filled the car until all Juno could focus on was the distant spice of Peter’s cologne. Juno managed to get his head back on his shoulders when he heard something about a ring, and did his best to piece together what he had missed. Apparently Nureyev crossed the wrong rich man during his time in Italy and ended up with a target on his back a mile wide. 

“Before or after you stole that ring?” Juno interrupted. 

“Darling, you wound me. It was after I was given that ring as a gift,” Nureyev chuckled. “No need for that tone of suspicion. You can’t use any of this anyway. Off the record, just like you said. Technically, I’ve just committed treason for telling you.” 

“I’ll keep it to myself then.”

The car came to a stop outside of a building that decidedly wasn’t Juno’s apartment. 

“Where the hell are we?” 

“You’d kill me if I made you see a doctor for your injuries, correct?” 

“What—“

“Correct?” Nureyev pressed. 

“Fine. Yeah, I guess.” 

“Well I have quite the extensive knowledge of first aid, and none of my equipment on me,” Nureyev explained. “Not every kind offer is a death threat, you know.”

“Just help me up,” Juno grumbled, an arm under his elbow before he had even registered the car door opening. 

The walk up to Nureyev’s apartment wasn’t long, even if he was half-hauled up the fire escape like a sack of potatoes. The part of him trying to forget the image of Peter pulling a gun on him decided, in its exhausted state, that there wasn’t any other person he’d rather have lug him up a set of stairs like a potato sack. The rest of him was too focused on the memory of the perfect grip of Nureyev’s hand around his knife. 

“You do this often?” he snorted when Nureyev loosened his grasp enough for Juno to lean back against the railing. As much as Juno hated heights, he knew well they weren’t the reason his heart was pounding against his breastbone. 

“Usually when I bring someone home, they’re not bleeding,” Nureyev chuckled, unlocking the window. “So no.”

“What do you mean by usually?” 

Nureyev rolled his eyes, then stepped aside and gestured towards the window with a little bow, like a butler holding a door open for his filthy rich employer. He looked the part too, in his dark, tailored suit paired with his million dollar smile. In the shadow of the highrises all around, he looked angular and cubist, until the light from a passing car shone upon the soft curve of his face once more. 

“Ladies first,” Nureyev insisted. 

“If you stab me in the back—”

“That would be counterproductive to trying to fix the rest of your wounds. My first aid kit isn’t going to walk out here and patch you up of its own accord, you know,” Nureyev teased. 

“Fine,” Juno conceded, dropping through the window and into an apartment so cramped that in three steps, he stood in the bedroom, kitchen, and living room all at once. 

“It’s not much, but it’s home,” Nureyev sighed from behind him, closing the window as he spoke. “Let’s get a light on in here, shall we?”

Even with the lead chain of exhaustion weighing upon him like a constricting snake, Juno couldn’t kick the instinct to look around. Though Nureyev didn’t seem the type, he didn’t keep much to look at. The bed was made neatly, though loose enough that one could slip in or out and hardly disturb the sheets. He kept a chair or two and a coffee table, but no couch, and his kitchen was almost as threadbare as Juno’s. What drew Juno’s eye, however, was the suitcase. 

A black leather bag, packed to bursting, was propped mere inches from the door, right next to a pair of discarded shoes, an overcoat, and an umbrella. 

“Going somewhere soon?” Juno asked, gesturing to the suitcase. 

“An old instinct from the war,” Nureyev explained. Juno hadn’t realized how close the two of them were until he felt Nureyev sliding his coat off his shoulders and saw him hang it on a hook on the wall. “With my name compromised, I need to be able to leave at a moment’s notice. We were taught to disappear whenever trouble arose.”

Even as Nureyev strolled away, Juno could feel the ghost of those hands on his shoulders, fingers mere inches from his neck. Peter’s breath had fluttered just behind his ear, and Juno felt something in his chest flutter in return. 

“Huh,” Juno murmured to himself. 

“Why don’t you take a seat? I left my first aid kit out somewhere,” Nureyev insisted, milling about the tiny space until it caught his eye atop the comforter of the bed. 

Juno took a seat in the nearest chair. His eyes narrowed as Nureyev searched and returned. He couldn’t help but find it odd that in such a neatly packed space, Peter might lose something of such value. Even if his own apartment was admittedly, a bit of a mess, he always kept emergency supplies in the exact same place. 

“Why’s the kit out?” he asked, even if it might be the question to get him killed. Juno didn’t realize just how far away his gun was until it registered just why Nureyev might have taken his coat in the first place. 

“I thought I felt ill when I stopped back at my apartment,” Nureyev shrugged as he returned, pulling a wood-backed chair across from Juno and taking a seat himself. “I was ensuring I hadn’t developed some sort of fever. It seems the sight of the crime scene just affected me more than I was anticipating.”

“Are you feeling better now?” 

Juno was almost positive Nureyev hadn’t meant for his smile to look so weak, curling like tendrils of smoke in a hazy bar. 

“I’ve had quite the day, my dear detective,” he sighed. “But first and foremost, I’m worried about you. Do you know where all you’re bleeding?”

Juno wasn’t sure why his pulse doubled and his hands shook as he did so, but he did his best to undo the first few buttons on his shirt. After a moment of struggling on the third, Nureyev reached to lay a hand on his wrist. 

“Juno,” he started. “Are you sure you’re quite alright?”

“Yeah,” Juno said, unsure of when he’d become so breathless, though he doubted that Peter’s burning gaze on his newly exposed collarbone was helping. 

That gaze paired with that near-predatory grin made Nureyev look like the only thought in his mind was just how to break that twelve inch barrier between those sharp teeth of his and Juno’s neck. When Nureyev brushed his hands to the side and replaced them with his own, he felt his breathing stop altogether. 

The smoldering expression left as soon as it appeared, leaving Juno to catch his breath in the aftermath as Nureyev continued as if nothing had happened. 

“This doesn’t look half bad,” Nureyev mused, though his brow was knit as he looked over every single bruise or scar across Juno’s chest. “I don’t think I’ll have to do any stitches.”

“You’ve got stitches in that thing?”

“A gift from my family’s private surgeon,” Nureyev explained. 

He had bent double to look at the marks just above Juno’s hip, neck craned at an angle that couldn’t have been comfortable. Even as ridiculous as he looked, Juno found himself gripping the edge of the chair with white-knuckles. 

“Nureyev, if you’re gonna have to break your back, why don’t we just do this somewhere else?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Juno,” Nureyev huffed. “I’m not laying you out on the floor just for a couple of broken ribs.”

“I didn’t mean the floor.”

Nureyev sat up so fast Juno heard his back crack. 

“Juno, I haven’t even checked for breaks yet, I wouldn’t want to—”

Juno rolled his eyes. 

“For someone trying to get me in bed all day, you’ve got a funny way of seizing your chance,” Juno chuckled, then winced. “I’d hate for both of us to come out of here beat to a pulp. I’ll just lay down and you do whatever you have to do.”

“Just don’t lift the comforter. It’s new, and I’d hate to get blood on it,” Nureyev sighed.

For a moment, Juno wondered if the comforter might be hiding something, but quickly dismissed the thought. Nureyev had handed him his greatest secret on a silver platter. That wasn’t the kind of gift horse you looked in the mouth, especially with the way that gift horse could wield a knife. Peter didn’t even watch as he stood and relocated to the bed, so his suspicions were probably unfounded anyway. 

Nureyev probably just misspoke. Juno slid his gun into the top drawer of the nightstand just to be safe. 

Juno wanted to trust Peter Nureyev. He wanted to believe that Nureyev really did get a strange phone call at three in the morning and got roped into the District Attorney’s conspiracy. He had a feeling that fate wouldn’t be that kind to him, however. 

Out of common courtesy, Juno kicked off his shoes and finished ridding of his shirt. Just to make things easier for Nureyev, he told himself. No other reason. There wasn’t any burning in his gut other than the aching of ambiguously injured ribs and a few bloodied bruises in the shape of brass knuckles. 

When Nureyev returned to his side, he had a warm, damp cloth in one hand and tangled mass of gauze and bandages and rubbing alcohol crammed into the other. Even in the low light of the single lamp, he could plainly make out the way Peter’s face fell at the extent of the damage. Juno had a feeling Nureyev didn’t spend a lot of time getting into fights if he was so bothered by what Juno considered just another afternoon on the job. 

“You sure you don’t wanna call a hospital?” Juno snorted. “You’re looking at me like I got gutted.”

“I don’t have a phone,” Nureyev returned absentmindedly as he set the bottle down and began to run over Juno’s face with the damp cloth. 

“You know, you really could’ve just brought me home,” Juno sighed. 

“But I didn’t,” Nureyev replied, bright eyes still fixed on the blood above Juno’s eyebrow like he was looking onto the face of a dying lover. 

“Yeah, I was wondering about that.”

“Must you interrogate me at every turn, detective?” Nureyev huffed, replacing the cloth with the alcohol. “I’m sorry if that stung.”

“Geez, sorry for trying to get to know you better,” Juno said with a roll of his eyes, voice just a little gruffer than usual as the alcohol burned against the wound. 

“Apologies accepted,” Nureyev chuckled, turning the cloth and alcohol to the remainder of the visible cuts. “Would you believe me if I told you I feel terribly for allowing you to get injured like this?”

“Never,” Juno joked. Peter glared affectionately. 

They remained in silence for several moments afterward, Nureyev half-shadowed in the lamplight and continuing to treat every bruise as if a touch too hard might shatter Juno altogether. He looked like some kind of guardian angel in the dark, even with his tie undone and his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. 

Juno spent a moment too long gazing at the muscle and sinew that danced within his forearms, accentuated in the low light. Nureyev caught his gaze and returned it with the kind of dangerous grin that Juno hardly minded anymore. He only minded that it sent a visible shiver slithering down his spine.

That ruthlessly exciting danger vanished away, however, and Nureyev’s face returned to the soft and pensive mask it had worn mere moments before as he ran a pair of fingers along Juno’s ribcage and tested every bruise to ensure it wasn’t a break. 

“What’s the verdict, doc?”

“Nothing broken, though there might be one cracked,” Nureyev sighed, as if he shattered his own heart in saying those words. “I’ll have to bar you from any strenuous activity for a little while.”

Juno rolled his eyes. 

“I’m a big kid, Nureyev, I can take care of myself,” he snorted. 

“Forgive me for worrying about the person responsible for my freedom,” Nureyev returned. 

Juno merely groaned, one arm falling on the pillow behind his head. He pretended the momentary flexing of his bicep had been an accident. Either way, it seemed to catch Nureyev’s eye. 

“Thanks for the bandages,” he started. “Anything you can do for the pain?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. Where does it hurt?”

Juno pointed to a spot a few inches above his navel where a purple bruise was already blooming. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting from Nureyev, but the soft press of lips right above the bruise wasn’t it. 

“Oh,” he murmured. 

“Oh, indeed,” Nureyev chuckled. “Where else?”

Juno pointed to another bruise, stifling a quiet gasp as Nureyev’s lips trailed over it, feather-light and earth shattering all at once. 

“Anything else I can kiss better for you, detective?” 

With his head spinning and his heart pounding and his mind long since functioning, Juno looked the man who once held a gun to his head in those dark, hungry eyes, and pointed to his lips. 

And all at once, Peter Nureyev was kissing him, worshipping at his lips like an altar and pressing a hand that was just as strong as it looked into Juno’s back. The other wandered over the side of his face, a thumb running over a scar atop his cheekbone as if a gentle enough touch might erase the cruel one that had marred the skin before it. 

Some great and fierce and protective beast reared its head within Juno’s chest, insisting that this gentle, terrifying enigma of a man needed to know how it felt to be regarded with such tender warmth as he had shown when doting over even minor injuries. Juno didn’t care if his rib protested or if he accidentally skewed Nureyev’s glasses when flipping their positions and pressing a bruising kiss into the base of his neck. 

Distantly, he felt Peter laugh his way through a stifled groan and slide a hand into his hair to press him all the closer. 

Juno vaguely remembered a dark bruise having been upon his neck that morning, and the beast in his chest roared in approval at the thought that the mark might, in this gesture, become Juno’s, rather than that of a faceless man Nureyev had spent the night with a day ago. 

If Peter’s reaction was anything to go by, he certainly didn’t mind. 

“This isn’t what I meant by bedrest, detective,” he gasped, though his voice shook with a low chuckle that Juno thought had no right being as attractive as it was. 

“You started it,” Juno retorted, raising his head to get a look at that lopsided grin. 

“It’s fitting, darling. You know what they say,” Nureyev teased. “Ladies don’t start such matters, but they might as well finish them.”

“Fuck off,” Juno snorted. 

“I’m trying. Get back to what you were doing, I was thoroughly enjoying myself,” Nureyev huffed. When Juno remained lost in the sight of him for just a moment too long, he made a face, knotted a hand in Juno’s hair, and gave his head a joking shove in the direction of his neck. 

It might have been seconds or minutes or hours later when Juno began undoing Nureyev’s shirt. Time didn’t seem to mean much anymore with Peter Nureyev beneath him. 

“I’ll warn you, there’s some scarring,” Nureyev started as Juno’s hands fumbled past a pair of silver lines on his chest.

“I’ve seen worse,” Juno waved him off, eyes too busy roving over every newly exposed inch of torso to bother glancing up at Nureyev’s newly fallen face. 

“And—”

The gun was in Juno’s hand before his heart even had time to sink. 

Even staring up at Juno and the barrel of a gun he had held to the detective’s head mere hours before, Nureyev had the nerve to look beautiful while doing it. His lipstick was faded and half kissed off, making his snarl look like that of a predator mere moments after ripping out the throat of its prey. 

When he saw the note of fear in those eyes, Juno felt like an icy hand had plunged into his chest and squeezed his heart, still squirming and pounding against the vice grip in protest. 

“Why is there a bullet wound above your hip?” Juno demanded, pretending his voice wasn’t shaking like a leaf. 

“Because my father shot me,” Nureyev spat. 

“And you killed him?”

“And I killed him,” Nureyev repeated. Something hoarse and dry crept into his voice, and he swallowed. “While I’m here, you should probably know that the first aid kit was out from this.” 

He paused to gesture to the angry looking patch of bandages just above his hip. 

“And let me guess, you didn’t have time to change the sheets since you bled all over them?”

“How perceptive of you, detective!” Nureyev mocked. “What’s the genius sleuth going to do now? Shoot me?”

Juno reached for the gun with his other hand. Nureyev jumped, but stilled when he saw Juno had merely turned the safety on. 

“You’d better have one hell of a story, Nureyev.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh noooooooo how did this happen oh noooooooo also not saying reread chapter two with this context but......i put an assload of clues in and i wrote it specifically to be fun on the second read
> 
> also!!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll eat my hat
> 
> yell at me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a doozy y'all!!
> 
> Content warnings for death threats, blood mention, injury, betrayal, past espionage, pills/pain medication, unsafe binding mention, bribery mention, surgery mention, background period-typical homophobia/transphobia, manipulative/overall shitty parenting, death mention, murder mention, past manipulative relationship, organized crime mention, justice system corruption mention, gun violence mention, execution mention, burglary mention

“Talk,” Juno demanded. 

“What do you want from me, Juno?” Nureyev sighed, his gaze flickering away from the revolver just long enough to catch Juno’s eye. 

Nureyev had to be a hell of an actor, or maybe Juno was that much of an idiot to squint in vain for the steely glint of a killer behind his eyes. He felt something within him twist painfully and forced himself to pretend that the traitorous organ in his chest was somebody else’s. The hand holding the gun shook nonetheless

“Your confession, ideally.”

“It’s hard to talk to you down the barrel of a gun, you know,” Nureyev all but snarled. “Handcuff me if you must. I don’t care, frankly. I just don’t know how itchy your trigger finger is, and I’d hate to find out the hard way.”

“No way. I’m not leaving you alone for a goddamn second,” Juno shot back. 

“You left me alone for quite a few seconds throughout the day, if I’m remembering correctly. I wonder why I didn’t kill you during any of those times?” Nureyev mocked. 

“Shut up. You needed me to think you were innocent—God, I’m stupid!” Juno growled. “You said your dad called you. You don’t even have a phone.”

“Quite perceptive, detective. It seems just your presence has managed to dull my wit and loosen my tongue,” Nureyev sighed. “There go all forty five of my dastardly plans to seduce and murder every poor, innocent Private Eye I meet. What a shame.”

“Just shut up, okay?” Juno spat. 

“My, detective, I thought you wanted me to talk.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Nureyev interjected. “Do you want me to shut up so you can call the HCPD, or do you want my story before you sentence me to death by electric chair?”

“I don’t know yet,” Juno admitted through gritted teeth. 

“At least hear me out, darling. It would be quite the shame if the HCPD found out who left me that love bite.”

Juno felt his heart stop. 

“You wouldn’t.”

“Just avenging my own death, my dear,” Nureyev smiled, though the look didn’t extend to his eyes. 

“I’m not—” Juno sputtered. “It’s not wrong to turn you in.”

“Is it, though? What if I told you my father shot me first? Would you believe me, detective, or have I proved utterly untrustable?” Nureyev mused, poison seeping into his voice like blood from a wound. 

“Just tell me the goddamned story,” Juno demanded. “I’ll decide once you’ve finished talking.”

Nureyev sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, as if Juno had asked him to come up with last words instead of an explanation. In a way, Juno supposed in asking for one, he might as well have knocked over the first domino for the other. When Nureyev’s face fell into a pained grimace, Juno couldn’t stop his chest from aching. 

Peter stifled a gasp behind bitten lips while one set of manicured nails drove themselves into his arm. Juno’s hand barely flinched when Nureyev’s fingers trailed back over his bone-white bandages and clutched, as if it might do anything at all to dull the pain. He told himself Peter was just trying to garner sympathy, but a lump rose in his throat nonetheless. 

“I do believe they’re wearing off,” Nureyev grimaced.

“Do you need me to get any kind of painkiller?”

“You’re quite the horrible interrogator, detective,” Nureyev choked. “Usually such things are withheld until after I’m finished talking.”

“I’m not inhumane, Nureyev.”

“You want me lucid, don't you? Better in pain than half asleep,” Peter laughed coldly. 

Juno sighed. 

“Where do you keep the tylenol?” 

“The left side of the cabinet under the sink,” Nureyev resigned. “I won’t move.”

“You’d better not,” Juno returned, gaze and aim still fixed on Nureyev until he returned with a pair of pills in his hand. He let them fall into Peter’s open palm, as he knew he’d never be able to pick up his gun again if their hands brushed, even for a moment. 

“Thank you, darling,” Nureyev murmured. He swallowed the pills without water, so Juno could not tell whether or not the series of dry, uncomfortable swallows after that were from the pills or the story about to tumble from his lips. 

“Your story,” Juno insisted before the topic could drift.

“There is one thing you must understand before I begin. I do not, and never did have a sister. My father never had a daughter, and the individual in the portrait in his study did not die at war,” Nureyev began. He sounded the way it felt to open a kitchen cabinet with dishes piled precariously inside. Even with all his terrified caution, the words still crashed to the ground as he said them. 

Juno raised an eyebrow and made to reach for his notepad. 

“If you write this down, I will kill you,” Nureyev snapped. 

“Got it.”

“The war began in my late twenties. I did my part as a nurse for some time, and as much as I disliked certain aspects of that position, I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t saved my life on numerous occasions,” he continued, one hand gesturing at the bandages. “A year or so into my service, I was asked to partake in a certain espionage mission. It went particularly well, if I do say so myself, and my superior officer asked that my position be switched.”

“What does this have to do with—” 

Juno found himself broken off by Nureyev’s glare, and dropped the subject. 

“After some time of that work, the government decided they needed a man in Italy, doing what he could to influence and sabotage the wills of wealthy men. The job went to a coworker of mine, but unfortunately, he returned from France in thirteen pieces, so it went to the last spy standing,” he continued, a warm smile tracing over his lips as he spoke. “With no other options, they sent me off to Italy with the tightest bandages they had for my chest and told me to return alive. I’ll admit, detective, I nearly cried when I was first called Signore Nureyev.”

“So that medical issue you mentioned—“

“Precisely,” Nureyev smiled when he saw Juno’s gun begin to slink back towards its holster.

Juno wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to put his gun away. Perhaps it was Nureyev’s obvious pain making him less of a threat. Perhaps he was just giving in to Peter’s obvious crusade to bias him in his favor. He felt, however, that the weight of Nureyev’s honesty weighed his gun down too. 

He expected Nureyev to cease talking without the added pressure of a firearm. Instead, he met Juno’s eye with enough unspoken gratitude to fill a novel and kept speaking. 

“The surname wasn’t my invention, of course. It was the last name of parents I never met, so anything I did in Italy would be untraceable to me or my family, save for a trusted few who knew it already. Mag was the first in generations not to bear his great-grandfather’s name, so I took it upon myself to continue the tradition with the one I chose.”

“Never took you as a traditional guy,” Juno snorted. 

“I’m not. I’m just partial to pretty thoughts,” Nureyev chuckled, though the wistful smile rotted the longer it tried to cling to his lips. 

“So what happened when you came home?”

“Well, father was rather upset with me when I spent my military pension on a bilateral mastectomy,” he continued. “The family surgeon was happy to oblige. He’d keep any secret, so long as you kept his pockets lined. Father, on the other hand—”

Nureyev broke off to sigh like an old, breaking train winding down to a stop. 

“He always wanted a son. He was oddly understanding on that matter, in fact. Unfortunately for him, my partner was as well,” Nureyev grimaced. “I passed well enough to be covered up in the eyes of the wealthy elite of my hometown. My sister could be mourned, and I could be introduced as a distant relative. My relationship was harder to sweep under a rug, so father uprooted and moved us here.”

“Couldn’t you just move away?”

“Not unless I wished to give up the safety of being a well-known rich man’s son, a roof over my head while I recovered, or my name in the will,” Nureyev returned. 

“I was wondering why I hadn’t met you before. I’ve had brushes with most socialites who look like they could kill you,” Juno said. “I’m guessing you two were just trying to keep things quiet.”

“Yes, though I must admit, I found my home in far less polite social circles,” Nureyev explained. “There was still a problem, however. I wrote to my former partner often, especially as my father’s condition worsened. I told him that it was best to wait out his illness, and perhaps, he might rejoin me in Hyperion City. He didn’t want to wait another moment, and visited the city unannounced.”

“Was he the one who moved the bed?”

“Yes—Dear Lord, Juno, that’s not that important,” Nureyev groaned. “My father caught the two of us together, and said if he ever saw that man’s face in his home again, he would shoot him on sight. He ran, and I finally moved out, though not so far as to entirely desert my father. My partner—” 

Nureyev choked on his own voice. Juno’s chest ached sympathetically. 

“He said if I wasn’t a coward, I’d run away with him. I said I couldn’t leave my father, especially with his knowledge of my condition. He then wrote me a letter giving me a date on which he would inform the mafia of my true name and home address.”

“What?” Juno sputtered. “When?”

“A week from today.”

“God.”

“I needed to run fast, but I had yet to scrape together enough savings to do so, especially without any fiscal help of my father, so I decided to break into his study, make it look like a vase or two had been burgled, and then not only sell it for my own bank account, but profit off of my father’s insurance gains when he eventually passed away,” Nureyev explained, words beginning to run together in their rapidity. “I didn’t even come in armed.”

“Breathe,” Juno reminded the murderer with whom he shared a bed. Nureyev followed his command, as shaky as Juno had ever seen him.

“Thank you,” Nureyev tried and failed to smile. “I didn’t know my father had taken to sleeping in his study. I suppose he was looking for eternal life in those medical texts. When I broke in, he assumed I was my former partner, and—”

“Shot on sight,” Juno finished with a grimace. 

“Yes.”

“And you two struggled for the gun, you got it, and shot him four more times.”

“It all boiled over,” Nureyev said, voice reduced to a croak. “I did love him, I swear. He saved my life—“

“He kept you prisoner,” Juno corrected, letting the sharpness fall out of his words when he pressed forward, more a gentle nudge than anything else. “What happened next?”

“In the military, we were taught a level of fortitude I’ve frankly lost, but it returned to me enough to clean the blood, drive home, and stitch my own wound,” Nureyev continued, reaching to pull back the comforter and reveal a bloodstain on the sheets. “I picked up a change of clothes, then returned to the crime scene to call the police.”

Juno’s stomach protested at the sight. Nureyev seemed to take notice, and replaced the comforter with a weak chuckle. 

“I would have thought you could stomach the sight of blood after all your experience,” Nureyev teased. 

“Yeah, and maybe you’d be able to fix my goddamn rib after so many years as a medical professional.”

“Barely a few months,” Nureyev scoffed. 

“Shut up.”

“So, what’s the verdict, detective?” Nureyev pressed after a pause. “Are you going to shoot me or turn me in?”

“Neither,” Juno sighed.

“Beg pardon?”

“With a good lawyer, decent evidence, and a fair judge, the worst they could get you for is manslaughter and a broken window. You still have a key to the house, right?” 

“Yes.”

“And it’s still one of your legal residences?”

“Yes.”

“Then you didn’t break and enter. You just broke,” Juno explained. “And if you lied a little about who your dad thought you were, you shot back in self defense.”

Nureyev raised an eyebrow. 

“Juno, that sounds rather nice, but I must ask why you look like you’re watching your own funeral,” Nureyev pressed. 

Juno sighed, unable to meet Nureyev’s eye much longer. For the first time in what felt like hours, Peter reached for his hand, lacing their fingers together as he fixed Juno with a soft look. Juno didn’t stop him. Instead, he squeezed the killer’s hand in return and felt his shoulders lose their tension. 

“Darling, are you quite alright?” 

“I meant to tell you when I got to the table. I overheard a conversation at the restaurant,” he started, finally managing a look up at Nureyev from where he sat a million miles away on the mattress. 

Nureyev’s hand connected them from where they sat, Juno back on his knees and Peter still disheveled where he had been thrown against the pillows. Juno had long since forgotten about his gun and the trigger and any urge he might have had to pull it. There was something cruelly caring behind the eyes of that damned man. 

“What was it?”

“Are you familiar with District Attorney Mason or Judge Hollis?” 

“I might have read the names on a sign or two,” Nureyev offered. “Why?”

“They’re both up for reelection this year, which means it’s in their best interest to make sure this case goes belly up for both of us,” Juno explained. When he couldn’t bear to look at the dead man walking any longer, he stretched out at his side. Nureyev kept their hands knit together all the way through, pressing a kiss to their intertwined knuckles when Juno settled. 

“Juno—” Nureyev started, preparing to assume the worst. Juno nodded in affirmation.

“Said they planted evidence. They want you fried and me out of a job,” he conceded. 

“Oh, Juno, you don’t mean—” 

“I’m going to break into the scene and take whatever they put there,” Juno interrupted, voice terse with its surety, though he felt like he was still convincing himself. “I’m going to hold them off for long enough to get you through the will reading, and then you need to run, alright? Change your name again. Do whatever you have to do. Hell, if you never write to me again, I wouldn’t care, so long as you end up okay, wherever you are.”

Nureyev’s mouth, still wearing his smeared lipstick like a crown, fell ajar as Juno spoke. Juno saw his breath catch. 

“Juno,” he started. Juno felt his stomach turn at the sound of his name murmured like some kind of proverb, advice and peace and poetry all in a pair of syllables. 

“I’m gonna warn you now, I’m a stubborn bastard to argue with,” Juno said. 

Nureyev shook his head. His jaw had since set in the same tight stare as the painting in his father’s study, though Juno couldn’t help but feel that Peter wore it better than the mass of oil paints masquerading as someone too lovely to be captured in any kind of medium. Even with sorrow and hope burning hand in hand within his bright, desperate gaze, he looked like the muse every artist dreamed of, creating piece after piece in the impossible search of something that might capture an iota of that god walking amongst men. 

“I was just wondering why you might do such a thing,” Nureyev said, knocking Juno from his train of thought. “You are a lawman, after all.” 

“Not a very good one,” Juno smiled. 

“I’m not letting you risk yourself like that for me.”

“I’ll break into the crime scene tomorrow night. You’ve got about twenty four hours to stop me, if you’re that serious about not letting me save your life,” Juno snorted. 

“If anything, I’m coming with you. You could use my expertise,” Nureyev offered. 

Juno’s mouth fell open to deny him, but then Nureyev squeezed his hand again, and his mouth fell shut. 

“With me or without, just don’t get hurt,” Peter continued. 

“Speaking of which,” Juno started. 

He rolled over to face Nureyev, unsure of when he had begun to count inches between their faces on the pillow. It seemed odd, after their former activities, but with Peter’s hand still clutched in his like it was tethering him to the earth itself, Juno felt his heart skip a beat. 

“The stronger pain medication is in the first aid kit, if you don’t mind parting my company,” Nureyev sighed. 

“You sound heartbroken,” Juno teased. 

“Any moment away from such lovely company seems an eternity,” Nureyev mused. Juno let out a laugh. 

“You’re an idiot,” he snorted. 

“An idiot who’s been shot.” 

“Touché,” Juno returned, prying himself off of the bed. Nureyev’s touch lingered on his hand until the space between them grew too great. 

Juno returned with the first aid kit in a hurry, the absence of a hand in his own aching between his fingers. 

“You’re too good to me, darling,” Nureyev breathed when Juno made his way back to the bed. “Do all Private Eyes offer this kind of service?” 

“Shut up.” 

Peter merely smiled, closed-lipped and soft. He made quick work of the harsher pain medication, wincing at the taste of bitter pills slipping past his tongue. Juno wasn’t sure why the minuscule moment of discomfort made his hand raise to Nureyev’s brow and brush the loose strands of hair from his face, but Peter certainly didn’t seem to mind. 

“Keep doing that, darling,” he said with a lazy grin. 

“Do you really mean it?” Juno asked before he could stop himself.

“Beg pardon?” 

“You’ve been calling me darling,” Juno clarified. “Unless you want to have this conversation later.” 

“Maybe in the morning, my dearest,” Nureyev returned. “Would you rather I not call you such things?” 

“I dunno. I think it’s kinda nice,” Juno admitted. 

“Wonderful, darling,” Nureyev grinned. 

Peter draped an arm over his waist, so heavy with the tug of sleep that it seemed to be pulled there, rather than placed. Juno could tell he was testing boundaries, proposing one piece of domesticity after another until Juno stopped him to draw a line. He didn’t stop Nureyev once, not even when his lips found Juno’s forehead. He didn’t particularly want to stop him at all. 

“That’s nice,” he couldn’t help but smile. 

“That was the intention,” Nureyev tried not to yawn. Juno gave him a sympathetic chuckle. 

“If you don’t get some sleep, we’re gonna have a problem.”

“I much prefer your company,” Peter mused, though Juno could tell the pain medications were weighing on him as much as exhaustion was himself. 

Juno sighed, eyes fluttering shut even as he tried to pry them open. He was running on few enough hours of sleep already, not to mention having the pulp beat out of him by a couple of gangsters. The bed was soft and the pillowcases smelled like the distant spice of Peter Nureyev’s cologne. As much as he wanted to find something more sensible to dress in or try to half-plan a heist with his last waking moments, the warm, dense blanket of evening was starting to get to him. 

“You’re beautiful when you’re like this,” Nureyev chuckled after a moment. Juno squeezed his hand in response. 

“Like what? Passing out?” Juno snorted. 

“You let your guard down when you get tired,” Peter noticed. “Don’t get offended. Most people do. It’s just nice to see you no longer pretending to be as big and as mean as the rest of the world.”

“Glad you think so,” Juno yawned. Apparently exhaustion fended off his inhibitions as well, as he didn’t even protest when Nureyev curled up against his chest, careful to mind the bandages and which ribs might still be aching. 

“Don’t think I mind you when you’re tired either,” Juno chuckled, a hand reaching into Nureyev’s hair seemingly of its own accord. It was nice to know his hair was just as soft as it looked. Peter appeared to appreciate the feeling of fingernails tracing lines and circles over his head like a childish drawing of a field of flowers, for he murmured his appreciation and tightened his grip on Juno’s other hand. 

“How am I any different than being awake?” he asked. 

“You’re cuter,” Juno teased. Nureyev gave him a joking shove, but fell back into his chest again as if pulled by a magnet. 

“You wound me, detective,” he said, faux-offense saturating his voice. “Do you think that’ll stand up in court?”

“Your Honor, my client couldn’t have killed his father. He’s too cute.”

“Oh, do be quiet,” Nureyev laughed, though it trailed away into a yawn. 

Juno hadn’t expected his day to end like this when he met Peter Nureyev, let alone between the gun to his head and the ropes on his wrists and the gunpoint confession. He might have pictured some sort of admittal of guilt, or perhaps, even sharing a bed, but in no mental image had he taken a killer into his arms and felt so safe with him lying there. He hadn’t imagined that his stomach would twist in knots at the idea of breaking the law, simply because it was the right thing to do. Least of all, he imagined the chaste feeling of soft lips on his cheek, just because it was nearby and Peter seemed to feel like they belonged there. 

“I’m sorry, love,” Nureyev yawned, interrupting his train of thought. Juno suspected he might be more asleep than awake at this point. 

“For what?”

“I should have asked if you’d rather I hold you.”

Juno chuckled and pulled Nureyev just a little bit closer to kiss the crown of his head. 

“You got shot, Nureyev. Lay however you’d like,” he mumbled into Peter’s hair. 

“It’s not fair to you, darling,” he murmured in reply. Juno prepared a response, but realized Nureyev had long since passed out against his chest. 

“Get some sleep,” he whispered instead, praying he might, for once, take his own advice. 

Juno Steel, Private Eye, was sharing a bed with a man with blood on his hands and blood on his sheets and the bullet hole in his abdomen to show it. He was sharing his bed with the recipient of an illegal surgery, who had broken into his father’s home to collect on insurance money. He couldn’t help but wonder if he would’ve done any different, had that been him. He doubted he would’ve done any better. 

At the end of the day, the killer in his arms was a good man. He could sleep soundly knowing that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoOO i analyzed the Shit out of these fuckign characters.....lvoe languages and vulnerability and honesty and shit. i also rewrote that backstory So Many times i didnt remember which one i actually wrote down in my draft until i went back through to edit this
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll jk no threat on this one this was a solid heart to heart chapter and I think we should all just enjoy these fuckers finally being soft
> 
> find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we love a good heist chapter!! once more, just being extra careful with the content warnings
> 
> Content warnings for breaking and entering, injury/surgery mention, implied/referenced abuse, police corruption and brutality, pursuit, referenced sexual content, death mention, murder mention, gun violence mention, dubious betrayal, execution mention, implied/background period-typical homophobia/transphobia (not explicit, just understood to be a barrier), arrest, minor self hatred, food mention

11/14/49 

Oh, journal. It’s been so long since we last talked. I should probably write down that I heard District Attorney Mason and Judge Hollis discussing planting evidence at the crime scene, just in case the last few pages were entirely illegible. I wasn’t looking at the pages when I was writing. Big mistake on my part. In case it wasn’t obvious, this is for political clout. Their seats are going up next election cycle, and Hyperion judges like the way an execution or two look on their campaign signs. 

I won’t repeat what Ransom told me last night. He’s got some information I don’t want shared if somebody ever finds this notebook. It’s not bad, not really. Just a bunch of innocent stuff the world wants to kill him for. 

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I felt about Peter Ransom. The day I’ve been through felt like a year, but I’ve at least come to terms with how it was initially. I knew he had half a dozen secrets in each back pocket when I met him, though I didn’t know if one of them was killing his father. I was also, I’ll admit, pretty drawn to him from the onset. That scared the hell out of me. 

Most of what I’ve been asking myself the last twenty four hours has to do with him. Who the hell is he really? What’s he hiding? Did he kill his father? Should I be afraid of him?

I’ve got an answer to most of those questions, but I think what I really needed answered was whether or not I can trust him. I have that answer for sure. I’m scared to admit it, but I think I do. He’s saved my life at his own risk, patched up what he called “injuries” and what I’d call “another afternoon at the job,” and, well, he’s proven to be some decent company. 

I’m not gonna clarify that on paper. I could write a novel about the way he makes me feel, but I don’t think it’s in my best interest to do that here. 

The case almost makes sense now, at least. I still don’t have the first idea how that note with the address for the bar fits into any of this. Maybe when we go to the scene to check for planted evidence, we might find something enlightening there. 

I don’t even care about solving the case anymore. I never thought I’d write something like that and mean it, but the fact of the matter is that the judges of this city see in black and white. I’m not letting a good man get carted off to the electric chair for no damn good reason at all. I hate people who think they’re bigger than justice. I can’t stand comic books and I couldn’t watch a movie about a vigilante cop if you tied me to a chair and pried my eyes open. I don’t think anybody should be above the law. Unfortunately, it seems like most people in Hyperion’s legal circles disagree with me. 

I hate that I’m planning this. It makes me feel like I’ve got a thousand little bugs burrowing into my skin. But the fact of the matter is that they’re gonna play dirty, whether or not I take the moral high ground. I can’t stop cheaters by following the rules. Maybe it’ll get me arrested, or jailed, or hell, maybe I’ll fry instead. At the end of the day though, I’d rather it be me in the chair instead of someone like Ransom. 

Rita’s gonna kill me if she ever finds this notebook. She’s been telling me to think about my own mortality less. Says it isn’t good for my mental health, but I don’t think I ever had one of those to begin with. 

Ransom’s story has holes. He doesn’t have a phone, and I’m sure whatever temperature they got on the cadaver’s probably gonna make his timeline look dubious. Even if I can’t find conclusive evidence that he wasn’t at the crime scene, District Attorney Mason’s a good enough lawyer to get him convicted. If he knows about Ransom’s pastimes, there’s no way in hell the jury’s gonna want to see him alive by the end. 

I think the best I can do is buy him a few days so he can get through the will reading, pack his bags, and run. I just wish he’d stop trying to stall me when I’m shoving him out the door. 

Honest to God? I wish I could go with him. Getting out of Hyperion City’s one hell of a pretty thought. Getting out of Hyperion City with Peter Ransom is a different thought altogether. Maybe he’ll be under a different name by then, but hell, I don’t think I’d care. 

At the end of the day, Hyperion needs one last good cop to try and fix what all the other ones want to break. I don’t think I’ll ever get to leave, no matter how many Peter Ransoms I meet in my life. 

Juno Steel, Private Eye

“I’ve told you time and time again, my dear,” Nureyev yawned into his shoulder from behind, having draped himself over Juno like a very clingy overcoat. “You could come with me, once this is all said and done.” 

Juno had learned two things about Peter Nureyev that morning. First, he was as good at planning heists as he was unlucky in enacting them. Second, you’d never see those skills if you couldn’t get him out of bed. Juno had nearly failed at that matter. 

After some begging, two bribes, an hour, and a few more bruises Juno actually didn’t mind that much, he’d managed to drag Nureyev to the kitchen with the promise of coffee and freshly made breakfast. It hadn’t been terrible, though Juno suspected he would’ve done better if he weren’t forced to fry eggs in the bottom of a pot. 

“Who the hell doesn’t have a frying pan?” Juno had groaned upon the sight of his cabinet. 

“Peter Nureyev, apparently,” Peter yawned through a chuckle so nice Juno thought his life would be incomplete if he never heard it again. 

Nureyev claimed to be a terrible cook, but Juno hadn’t expected him to be so bad that he worsened the cooking of everyone else in the room. However, he supposed that could be attributed to the way Peter draped his arms around Juno’s waist and kissed apologetically at a newly blossoming bruise right above his shirt collar. 

“You were phenomenal, my love,” he hummed, chin falling atop Juno’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your neck.”

“You’ve only got yourself to blame there,” Juno smiled as Nureyev let out a sleepy sigh. 

“You say that as if you didn’t enjoy it.” 

“That’s classified,” Juno joked.

Nureyev pressed his lips to Juno’s shoulder once more before spinning the detective in his arms like a dancing partner and kissing him properly. 

Juno could get used to mornings like this. In a perfect world, he might wake up to a million days identical to this one, and he doubted he’d ever get sick of them. He’d memorize the way Peter Nureyev liked his coffee and make it that way every day. He’d cook breakfast clad in Peter Nureyev’s shirt, pressed against Peter Nureyev’s stove with Peter Nureyev’s lips on his.

He wished he had a chance of a happy ending like that. It was a pretty thought, though. He could indulge a pretty thought while it lasted, and as such, let his mind slide back to such thoughts as lazy mornings and happily ever afters. 

“If you keep distracting me, you’re gonna have burnt eggs,” Juno chuckled, though he leaned into the touch like a plant to sunlight. 

“I like distracting you far more than I dislike burnt eggs,” Ransom mused. 

“I’m not letting you rip your stitches just because you wanna ‘distract’ me again,” Juno snorted. 

“You’re no fun, detective.” 

“I try,” Juno had laughed, and really meant it. 

When Juno dragged his mind kicking and screaming back to the present, he found himself tucking his notepad back into the breast pocket of a shirt that definitely wasn’t his and regretfully, elbowing Nureyev off of his shoulders. 

“Just give me a hand with these blueprints,” he snorted. 

“Anything you wish,” Nureyev returned, still half-awake. 

“God, do you always take this long to wake up?” 

“Whose fault is that? I’m horribly wounded, and you seduced me nonetheless, you brute,” Nureyev teased, clutching pearls he didn’t have. 

“Just hold down the other end of the paper,” Juno huffed, finding he had to force himself to sound exasperated. 

“Of course,” Peter chuckled, finally conceding to lend a hand. He set his coffee mug atop the other end, sparing Juno the trouble. 

“So what are you thinking?”

“It is my home, after all. I don’t see why we couldn’t just walk in the front door. A Trojan horse, if you will,” Nureyev proposed. The finger that had been lazily swirling around the rim of his mug slithered its way down and onto the blueprint, drawing a line up the snaky drive. 

“They’re suspicious of you already. I wouldn’t test them,” Juno sighed. 

“What’s worse, detective? Walking into the front door, or getting caught breaking into the back?” 

“How about breaking into the back door with an excuse?” Juno offered. “Borrowed anything lately?” 

“My father has a few library books out,” Nureyev said. 

“Perfect.” 

“And if they catch you?” 

“I’ll give ‘em hell,” Juno shrugged. 

“Juno—“ Nureyev started to chide. 

“What?”

“You really must stop doing that,” Peter sighed, one hand reaching to rub a gentle circle into Juno’s shoulder. 

“Doing what?” 

“Assuming the worst,” Nureyev continued. Juno winced as his thumb ran over a bruised mark. “My apologies, dearest.” 

“I’ll live.” 

“Can’t I convince you to try to spare yourself?” Nureyev asked, chin falling upon Juno’s shoulder. “For my sake, at least? I need you alive and well if I’m going to convince you to run away with me, darling.” 

“I’ve told you already. I can’t go,” Juno returned. 

“I can’t very well try to change your mind if you’re—“

“In a cold ditch somewhere, yeah, I know,” Juno huffed. 

“Oh, dream a little, dearest.” 

“Fine,” Juno snorted. “A warm ditch, then.” 

“Just don’t go anywhere I can’t reach you,” Nureyev murmured through a kiss to the back of his neck. “I can’t telephone a warm ditch.” 

“You couldn’t telephone a warm ditch if you wanted to. You don’t have a phone. I think we had this conversation,” Juno chuckled. 

“At gunpoint. I remember,” Nureyev teased. 

“I said I was sorry,” Juno huffed. 

“And I’ve said I forgive you,” Nureyev said simply. Juno found processing anything he said far harder with Peter’s lips pausing to press a kiss to the back of his neck and his thumbs hooking into Juno’s belt loops. “You’ve proven your apology too many times to count, my dear. You sure do know how to make a gentleman feel special. My interrogators hardly ever make me breakfast the next morning.” 

“Shut up,” Juno snorted. 

“I suppose I’ll just pantomime my break in plan then.” 

“God, you’re annoying,” Juno groaned. 

“You seem to be enjoying yourself.” 

Juno elbowed him in the rib, and Nureyev laughed like it had been knocked out of him. 

“Fine,” Nureyev conceded. The fingers that were playing with Juno’s waistband mere moments before found their way back to the blueprint. “See that room there?” 

“Yep.”

“That’s the library. Do you see the room leading out of it?” 

“There wasn’t—“ 

“Not to the untrained eye, Juno. And certainly not to the knowledge of the HCPD. There’s a single non-medical book in that entire library, and it’s The Myth of Sisyphus. It’s in the far back corner, behind enough bookshelves that it’s not even considered part of the crime scene,” Nureyev mused. “It’s fairly hard to read, however.” 

“Are you telling me you have one of those secret doorway bookshelves?” Juno joked.

“Yes.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I’m afraid not, detective,” Nureyev chuckled. 

“God, I hate your family.” 

“The feeling’s mutual, darling,” Nureyev said. “The hidden room was our surgeon’s office for quite some time for my post-operational care and my father’s series of surgeries. It’s been out of use for some while, so I doubt we’ll find any company.” 

“What happened to your surgeon?” 

“My father fired him after receiving his prognosis. Apparently pettiness doesn’t have to be genetic to spread to your children,” Nureyev chuckled. 

Juno rolled his eyes and forced himself to focus once more, even with Nureyev clinging around his shoulders like a touch-starved koala. 

“So how do we get in?” 

“Remember those hedges on the side of the building?” Nureyev asked. Juno groaned. 

“Don’t tell me we have to—”

“Unfortunately so, detective. I hope you enjoy picking leaves out of your hair. We’d have to go through the hedge maze otherwise, and as lovely as that would be as an afternoon picnic spot with you, fate has decided against such niceties for the time being,” Nureyev explained. 

Juno didn’t end up picking many leaves out of his hair. Even clad in black and shutting the door as softly as he could, Nureyev kept one hand in his hair all the while, even long after any plant matter was gone from it. 

“Nureyev,” Juno groaned when Peter placed a hand on his shoulder to hold him still. 

“Hold my flashlight, Juno,” Nureyev instructed, words muffled by the gloves he held between his teeth. 

“You’re really gonna do this now?” Juno huffed, taking the flashlight nonetheless. “This is serious.”

“As is the condition of your hair, my dear,” Peter insisted. “And like you said. We have an alibi.”

“You have an alibi.”

“Semantics.”

“If you just wanted an excuse to play with it, you could’ve just asked.”

“I want no such thing,” Nureyev evaded. 

“I thought you said we were done lying to each other,” Juno snorted. 

“You know me, Juno. Just a filthy, low-down, no good criminal. You can’t trust me as far as you can throw me, and I’m significantly taller than you are anyway,” Peter smiled, his voice dampened by his whisper. 

“No fair. You’ve got a heel.”

“I’m significantly taller than you out of my heels as well. Don’t get a big head about it,” Nureyev teased. His hands ran through Juno’s hair a few more times before he took his still-lit flashlight back and cast it around the darkened room. 

“An operating theater?”

“Precisely.”

Juno shuddered. 

“This is the kinda place that gives my heebies jeebies,” he murmured as his eyes followed the beam of light raptly. The little circle fell over jars and pill bottles and more tools and sharp objects than Juno even knew how to name. “How long since it’s been dusted in here?”

“Too long, I’m afraid. The house isn’t exactly in disrepair, but I always tried to spend as little time here as possible, and I wasn’t exactly going to stay to clean the secret passages,” Nureyev explained under his breath as the beam of his flashlight fell upon the door handle. 

“Understandable,” Juno mused. “So is there some kind of magic word, or do I just push the door?”

“Oh, dearest me, I forgot to tell him the ritual incantation,” Nureyev returned with a roll of his eyes. 

“Geez, sorry,” Juno snorted. “I’ve got a bad memory for ritual incantations. I nearly failed it when I took that as an elective in high school.”

“Oh, do be quiet,” Nureyev hissed. Juno elbowed him lightly. Nureyev elbowed him back with less remorse. 

The doorknob felt like ice under Juno’s hand, even if it was slick against his sweating palm. He was forced to grasp for it several times before the door announced its opening with a groan. 

Juno stepped into the library and felt oddly as if he had entered another world altogether. The only light came from Nureyev’s lowered flashlight and the distant windows of the hallway, meaning a hazy blue-gray shadow clung to the corners of every bookshelf like a low, slithering fog. Nureyev shut the door behind them. There was a soft thud, carrying a sense of finality. Juno swallowed. The way out was now closed. While he was sure The Myth of Sisyphus was on the shelf somewhere nearby, he hadn’t seen the glinting of the title anywhere in Peter’s beam. If everything went to hell, Nureyev was his only way out. 

Juno crept forward into the room, his hand in a vice-grip on the holster of his gun. Every footstep seemed to echo tenfold around the room, even as dense as all the shelves and books were. His heart hammered in his chest like it was trapped there, beating itself half to death in its frantic attempt at escape. Juno forced himself to take a deep breath. However, in the kind of darkness where books looked like rows of razor sharp teeth and every buzzing patch of shadow looked like a person hiding amongst the shelves, the breath sounded weak, like the dying hiss of a tea kettle as it’s taken off the heat. 

All the while, Nureyev’s portrait watched the room with haughty, narrowed eyes, like a hawk looking over a field of mice to decide which had the most snappable neck. In the dark, the oil painted face became a grotesque, with snaky eyes and spidery hands and a pensive look that turned to a sneer. 

“I truly hate that portrait,” Nureyev grimaced from behind. Juno nearly jumped a foot in the air.

“Your father left you everything, right?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, maybe if we do this job right, you’ll get to burn it,” Juno suggested. 

“You’re a genius, detective,” Nureyev smiled weakly. Juno felt their hands clumsily brush together. Peter took advantage of the opportunity and swept it up to kiss his knuckles. 

“Quite the gentleman,” Juno snorted. 

Nureyev didn’t laugh, merely giving Juno’s hand a little squeeze. 

“You’re shaking,” he noticed. 

“Why don’t we have that conversation once we’re out of here?” 

Nureyev went quiet with a sigh and dropped his hand as they rounded the corner into the taped off portion of the library. 

Juno tiptoed around the outlines of the body and gun on the floor, the portrait’s gaze prickling into the back of his neck all the while. Even as just a framed mass of paint on canvas, Juno felt the portrait’s sneer was that of the judge or District Attorney or anyone who might find out that he ever stepped a toe over the line of the law. It was his own mother, who sneered when he signed up to join the police academy, because someone like Juno Steel couldn’t ever make the world a little better when all he did was fuck it up. It was the stone cold face of his twin brother, dead because Juno hadn’t been competent enough to be in the right place at the right time and take the bullet for him. 

He only realized he’d been staring at that dark, contorting face for moments on end when Nureyev laid a steady, gloved hand on his shoulder. 

“Let’s keep going, love,” he whispered. Juno swallowed, merely nodding. Nureyev’s touch still ghosted over his shoulder, as light as a shadow that whispered away when he turned the corner of one last shelf. 

Juno heard the click from a distant flashlight before he even saw that cruel, white light crash into his face. His first instinct was to hold up a hand, backing away from the light like it was a blaze of fire eating its way through the library. 

Nureyev had the better sense to turn and run. 

Juno felt something hit his hand, and for a moment, wondered if Peter might have tried to drag him along with him, but with both his pounding heart and bile rising in his throat, he panicked and slapped the unknown object away. 

“Thought we’d end up arresting you some day or another, but never like this,” someone Juno instantly recognized to be the police chief growled from behind the flashlight. 

The sound of the voice who told him it was too bad he had been assigned to the case of his brother’s murder, and that he might as well suck it up and treat it as “good experience” was enough to set Juno’s blood aflame like a match to gasoline. He wanted nothing more than to reach for his gun and shoot, but deep down, he knew it was better to flee, following Nureyev to wherever he hopefully wished to be pursued. 

So he ran. 

Juno turned on his heel and sprinted as fast as short legs and shitty lungs would carry him, through the still-open door of the operating theater that he didn’t have the wherewithal to close behind him. He did manage to slam the outside door shut, flinging himself in any open direction his legs would take him. 

“Peter!” He called out into the light polluted night sky, though neither the sky, nor the hedges, nor what he realized was the center of the hedge maze yielded any sympathy. 

“He went that way!” Another cop called from the door. Juno shut his mouth and tried to force his way through the nearby hedges, but found they had grown too thick. Instead, he ducked around a corner. 

He instantly knew he had made a mistake. He made turn after turn, circling back to where he started twice before getting turned around entirely. Juno heard the police milling about mere feet away at times, face going red as he ran and held his breath all at once to stay quiet. 

Nureyev wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Juno assumed he had left through the weak spot in the bushes they had entered through, but Juno had no idea how to get back to it now. 

He couldn’t blame Peter. If that brush to his hand in the crime scene was what Juno thought it was, he hadn’t meant to leave Juno alone. He assumed Juno might follow him and run. 

And yet, Juno couldn’t help the burning at the back of his eyes and the top of his throat at the memory of Nureyev’s words the night before. As a spy, he was taught to disappear whenever trouble arose. Juno wondered if he had been taught to do so at any cost. 

With monotony and chance his only company, Juno tried and failed to keep his mind off a single thought that ached in his head and gut and chest like someone had driven a heavy, cold rock where his brain and stomach and heart were all supposed to be. 

He had spent hours wondering whether Peter Nureyev was on the side of good or evil, not even realizing he had missed a third answer. If Nureyev had truly left him alone at that crime scene, the truth was clear. He was on his own side, wherever that happened to fall. 

Juno tried to force the thought out of his mind with memories of soft touches and sweet nothings that grew weaker and weaker along with his legs and lungs. A warring part of his mind shoved back against those soft images, reminding him that this would all hurt less if he tried to forget the last twenty four hours. There would be less blood if he quit struggling. 

He would have thought it would be easier to break a bond built in two days. 

When his lungs threatened to give out, he all but keeled over, shaking hands at his sides and hung head staring off into some piece of half-dead grass by his left shoe. He wasn’t sure if he had the energy to move his eyes away. 

Juno heard the click of the handcuffs before he felt the cold, cruel metal around his wrists. 

“I always hated you, Steel,” the police chief snorted. “I just didn’t think I’d be the lucky sucker who got to bring you in.”

“Aren’t you gonna read me my rights or something?” Juno sputtered. 

“I don’t really feel like it. Do you?” He addressed his partner. His partner shrugged and shook his head. 

“You bastards,” Juno wheezed. “You planted that goddamn note, didn’t you? I was supposed to overhear that conversation at the restaurant!”

“I didn’t plant anything,” the partner said. “Malarky did.”

“That two faced son of a—”

“Let’s keep it clean, Steel,” the police chief interrupted. 

“This is a fucking set up,” Juno growled, sending his shoulder back into the chief of police’s sternum when they began to shove him towards the mouth of the maze. 

“Save your energy for the interrogation room,” the partner sneered. 

“You’re not gonna get away with this!”

The police chief snorted. 

“I already have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh NO not another CLIFFHANGER CHAPTER (sorry. ish)
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll make you breakfast with all sorts of incorrect utensils
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're DONE im low key sad i loved writing this one so much! This one's much lighter content-wise
> 
> Content warnings for police/judicial system corruption, minor hopelessness, mentioned pursuit, mentioned gun violence, incarceration, mentioned execution, past self-hatred

11/15/49

I don’t know who I’m writing this for anymore. I don’t think I’m gonna have the chance to help Ransom after this, so who knows if I’m actually gonna need my notes? I doubt this is gonna help at my trial. An officer I didn’t recognize dropped my journal outside my holding cell when he was taking all the belongings they stripped off of me, and I’m not gonna take that for granted, so I think I’m just gonna write until the cops stop partying long enough to stop me. 

No good deed goes unpunished, huh?

I feel like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. I don’t know if anyone will ever read this or believe me or anything, but if somebody does, the next few paragraphs are going to be important. They’ll never fly as evidence, not unless you’re a desperate reporter. Just treat it like a tip. 

At the very least, the chief of police, Judge Hollis, and District Attorney Mason are in on some kind of conspiracy. The chief of police had a note planted at a crime scene, and like any decent detective, I followed the instructions on the note and went to the address at the time it said to go. Turned out to be a bar where I overheard the Judge and DA talking about planting evidence to frame my client and destroy my career, so I tried to sneak back into the crime scene when I wouldn’t be surrounded by cops. I got caught, and now I’m here. 

Here’s the thing: I was on the HCPD for long enough to know officers don’t sit in crime scenes for hours at night without any lights on unless they’re expecting company. I know a set up when I see one. I just wish I could’ve seen it sooner. 

I’d bet my hat this was Hollis’s idea. He’s a real rat, and Mason and my old boss are a lot more likely to take a bribe than they are to actually put work into their corruption. It’s a good look for all of them to get me in the slammer, and none of them particularly care about whether or not I have a case going. I guess I don’t really either, but that’s not the point. Things have gone on their head since Peter Ransom called me from a payphone a few days ago. 

Almost all of them have left the station by now. If I wasn’t sure it was a conspiracy before, I’m pretty sure it is now. The Judge and DA showed up, and one of them even brought champagne. They drank a toast to Juno Steel, the newest inmate of Hyperion’s stupid maze of a correctional system, and then left me alone with this guard for the night and one unlucky sucker who had to finish some paperwork. 

At least the guard seems sympathetic. For all I know, he could have dropped my journal on purpose just to give me something to keep my hands busy so I don’t pace myself to death. He doesn’t seem like he’s particularly upset with me for writing, so that’s nice, at least. Just me and this shadow until the rest of the cops start showing up for the day. 

It’s a little weird to see the station this empty. Usually they’ve got a couple here at all hours, but protocol must have changed since I was “encouraged to retire.” 

God, I hope Ransom’s okay. I’m sure he’d be in here with me if he didn’t get away, but I don’t know who else they had stationed near the scene or who might chase if they saw someone running. Even if he did run without me, I think I can live with that. He probably thought I was going to follow. I’ve got to keep telling myself that. I don’t have much left at this point, so if I’m stuck clinging to threads of hope, it’s just how it’s going to be. 

I haven’t prayed in years. I grew up in the kind of family that only pretended to be religious to keep the grandparents happy, so I didn’t even do that back then. I still think I might say one for Peter Ransom. If he gets caught...well, I don’t think there’s much I could do to keep him alive for much longer. 

This isn’t my first time getting arrested. Hell, this isn’t my first time in this exact damn cell. Rita’s the smartest person I know, so she’ll figure something out. If not, my ‘If Mister Steel Gets Arrested For Good’ instructions have the code to the safe underneath my desk. If there’s anyone I trust to make it through a situation like this, it’s her. 

Hell, I don’t know if she’ll even be mad at me. I’ve always been the one with more of a stick up my ass about following the law. You wouldn’t think so if you looked at my record. I had more misdemeanors than most hardened crime bosses before age eighteen. I think the HCPD changed me a bit. I felt like somebody had to follow the law if everyone else was gonna play fast and loose with it. 

God, I’m stupid. You can’t break a broken system by following its rules. I wish that might have clicked while I still had the chance to make a thing or two better. I can’t fix this place, and it’s nearly killed me to try. Maybe I might set some sort of glowing moral example for all the other suckers in prison once Hollis and Mason are done presiding over my trial. 

I wish I would’ve run when I had the chance. Ransom offered, but I was still dumb enough to think I could do anything to keep this place from getting worse, and honestly, I think there was a part of me that didn’t think I deserved that happy ending. 

I don’t think it sounds half bad right about now. 

Juno Steel

The guard cleared his throat behind one gloved hand, and recognizing the first noise he had made all evening, Juno tucked his notebook back into the breast pocket of his coat. The officer cut an imposing figure through the dimmed light of the station, all harsh lines and angles with his head nearly a foot above Juno’s. Beyond that, however, Juno couldn’t make out much of his appearance. He had a standard issue uniform that didn’t seem to fit particularly well, but Juno doubted the HCPD’s overfunding went to any of the green cops who might get stuck on a night-long guard duty. 

The guard’s gloves, on the other hand, weren’t standard issue. Nor were they part of any uniform. Juno didn’t catch himself staring at the graceful, and rather expensive looking leather until one of those gloved hands started to snake towards the officer’s holster. 

Juno startled backwards, but the guard raised a finger to his lips. 

“Stay quiet,” he murmured. Juno swallowed, deciding it was best not to test the guard’s limits. 

“Remember to clock out, Evans,” he called. 

He sounded like a teenager trying to lower his voice to sound older, though Juno wondered if he might just be wearing the remains of the head cold that had been going around Hyperion’s legal circle. It had even knocked out one of the older judges, though he was pretty sure that might have just been good, old-fashioned arsenic. 

“Yeah, geez, I’m getting there,” Evans growled from another room. When he emerged to walk past the cell, he caught Juno’s eye with a glare. 

“Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve seen old Dogface Evans,” Juno greeted, just for the sake of letting off some steam. “You’ve gotten even prettier in my absence. Picked up any new hobbies? You look like you’ve been bobbing for french fries.”

“Shut your damn trap,” Evans snapped. 

“Don’t think I can.”

“Keep a muzzle on the stray,” he snarled at the guarding officer instead. 

“Go home,” the guard returned coolly. “You can close your mouth on your own.”

Evans made a sound like a bulldog struggling for a breath on a hot day, then turned to trudge out the door. The other officer watched him all the way out, his gloved and twitching fingertips still pattering an execution’s drum across the grip of his gun. Juno wasn’t entirely sure when he stopped breathing, but the shadow of the guard’s chest ceased to rise and fall as well. 

In the parking lot, a car motor growled to life, and the guard visibly relaxed. His hand slithered its way back to his pocket, though his cruelly erect posture refused to so much as budge. Even relaxed, Juno had a feeling his pulse still squirmed uncomfortably in his throat. 

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you two don’t like each other,” Juno started. His voice had gone unexpectedly thin. 

“No,” the guard returned, then turned on his heel away from the cell and began to walk, his footfalls ringing out like the midnight echoing of a clocktower through a rural town crammed into the gap between mountains and half-devoured by a choking mist. 

“Where the hell are you going?”

“For a walk. Don’t escape while I’m gone.”

“What?” Juno all but yelped as the guard walked off. He caught the bars of his cell in his hands, like having something to grip onto might do anything at all to ground him in the buzzing void of his current reality. “Hey, come back!”

“In one moment, detective,” the guard continued in that strange, creaky voice. “Be patient with me.”

“I’ll be patient when I want to be patient, goddammit!” Juno called.

He banged a fist against a bar with a wince, a jolt of cold pain running up his arm as he did so. The echo mocked its way around the room, pinging off the walls and ceiling and composing itself into a percussive piece in tandem with the guard’s footsteps. The camaraderie of noises laughed out the door when the guard turned to open it, still backlit as he wheeled around to face Juno. 

Juno couldn’t see the guard’s face, but he felt his gaze boring into him the way a knife sinks its teeth into its victim. 

“Stay there,” the officer said with a shrug that looked sharp and unnatural against the jaundiced light of the hallway. 

He slithered away into the remainder of the police station before Juno could get a word in edgewise. 

At the very least, he could try to follow where the guard was going from which distant station lights were dying away, great blobs of darkness shuddering into view as they were released from the prison of the shitty single lightbulbs that kept most of the station out of the dark. It looked to Juno like the guard made a circle around the perimeter of the building, leaving the inner lights nearest to the cell for last. 

The last thing Juno saw before the station went entirely dark was the light behind the large, blank eye of the security camera fizzling out. 

He spent a few seconds blinking furiously against the dark, as if it were smoke, and not lack of light curling around his eyes like a feather boa around the neck of a dancer. The bars in his hand felt suddenly colder. It seemed the one thing grounding him from the great, unseen expanses behind and in front of him was also trying to reject his touch. 

The guard entered the room once more, heralded by the trumpets of a creaky old door and the drums of his HCPD-issue boots. He fished something out of his pocket, and when a little orange flame sparked off of his teeth, Juno realized it had been a match. In that soft, orange glow, he caught just a moment of the guard’s face. 

He saw hair that might have been dark and a cheek that might have been soft, had he longer to look at it. There was much to be unsure of. However, of the guard’s many shadowy, uncertain features, one sat amongst them that Juno would have recognized anywhere, no matter how low the light. 

“You didn’t really think I’d leave you behind, did you?”

Peter Nureyev fixed him with a sharp, broad grin, and Juno felt his knees go weak. 

“Nureyev,” Juno barely managed to breathe. 

“I’m here,” Nureyev returned, his self-assured stride turning into a jog as he rushed over. The match sputtered in response, but did not go out. However, it did illuminate his wince. 

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Juno started. “You just got those stitches done.”

“I’m a grown man, Juno,” he smiled, a thousand miles away on the other side of the prison bars. 

The station was darker than an oil spill, the air dense with shadow. Nureyev’s light burned in quiet fury nonetheless. Even though the match was beginning to grow dimmer, Juno caught its twin reflections in his dark, soft eyes, trailing sparks over his irises like a finger trails a beloved’s name in a frosted window. 

For a moment, Juno was lost in those fiery eyes and the great, gnawing shadow beyond. Then Nureyev took him by the hand around the nearest cell bar and Juno found himself again. 

“Come closer, Juno. I can’t see you,” Nureyev murmured. 

“There’s a cell door in the way,” Juno snorted. 

“Darling, I can’t believe you’d suggest a silly little thing like that might ever stop me,” Peter chuckled. “Doors are but merely suggestions.”

The match fizzled out, but in Nureyev’s company, the darkness seemed to have softened, more alike to a blanket or an endless void of stars than it was the choking smog of mere minutes before. There was a kind of safety in the dark with someone like Peter nearby.

Juno heard Nureyev’s hand passing through the bars before he felt it slot itself against his waist like those two components were crafted by some divine hand just for the purpose of fitting together. Nureyev pulled him close, and even with that barrier, Juno felt that Peter was as pressed to the bars as possible, perhaps uncomfortably so. 

Nureyev didn’t seem to care, however, for he gave Juno’s wrist a parting squeeze, replaced his free hand upon the curve of Juno’s cheek, and kissed him like his life depended on it. 

Kissing Peter Nureyev felt like breathing. It was as natural as it was something Juno felt he might die without, so when Nureyev pulled back by just an inch, Juno leaned against the bars and did it again. 

“You came back for me,” Juno couldn’t help but smile as Nureyev held him closer. 

It felt like being held midway through a slow dance to some schmaltzy love song Juno would pretend to hate. He was too stubborn to openly change an unpopular opinion, even if he knew, deep down, that love songs didn’t sound too bad when he could imagine someone during one of them. He wouldn’t mind hearing the same few verses about the kind of person you could hold close and call your own, so long as that person was one with the ghosts of a fire in his eyes and his sharpened grin barely an inch away from Juno’s mouth. 

“Of course I did. I didn’t realize you hadn’t followed me until I was already to safety, I’m afraid,” Nureyev returned. 

His thumb began drawing little patterns across Juno’s scarred cheekbone, running in tiny circles over a barely visible line Juno had earned when his first attempt at shaving went bad. When Juno’s past partners had done the same, it often felt like they were trying to fix or erase the scar. Nureyev, on the other hand, seemed to be drawing a small, many-petaled flower with his thumb, merely anointing a face he already looked at as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world. Juno could still feel its petals dappling his skin as Nureyev pulled his hand away and began fiddling with the door’s lock. 

The cell door swung open with a creak that sounded like chirping songbirds. Juno barely had time to appreciate it before Nureyev caught him in a hug. 

“I’m so sorry I left you behind,” he murmured into Juno’s shoulder. 

“You didn’t mean to,” Juno protested, voice muffled by the stolen police uniform. 

“That doesn’t matter.”

Though his vision was entirely blocked by Nureyev’s shirt and the arms cradled around his head, Juno could feel a hand sliding into his hair, gloved fingertips running litting circles against his scalp. 

“They weren’t too harsh to you, were they?” Nureyev continued. 

Juno didn’t care if his side ached in protest. He pulled Peter closer when he felt a kiss to the crown of his head. 

“I’m just glad you’re here now.”

Nureyev continued to run his hand through Juno’s hair, chest rising and falling with the practiced slowing of one trying to quell some great emotion. Juno could hear his heart pounding away in his chest, however, and felt his own skip a beat in response. He was struck with an odd realization that the organ’s thrumming was for him, of all people. It raced within Peter’s chest out of worry or excitement or some emotion too great to name just for the sake of the person he now cradled in his arms like a protective hand around a candle on a windy night. 

“I tried to get here as soon as I could, my love,” Nureyev murmured into Juno’s curls. 

“I get it,” Juno returned, unable to help a smile at the feeling of Peter’s low voice rumbling against his ear. 

“I hate that you had to spend any amount of time in this godforsaken place,” Peter sighed. He loosened the hug a bit, as if remembering both of their abdominal injuries, even though Juno’s rib barely groaned at the feeling of the embrace. 

“Why don’t we get out of here then?”

“Quite forward of you, detective,” Nureyev smiled as Juno took him by the arm. 

It was a small gesture, but the passing light from a window illuminated Peter’s face to reveal a grin, as if the hand that had scattered the stars amongst the night sky was the same hand that had hooked around his elbow and guided him towards the door. 

“Your place or mine?” Juno snorted. 

“Neither, if Rita held up her end of the bargain,” Peter returned. 

“Her what?”

“If either of us want to survive to the end of the week, I’d say it’s in our best interest to leave Hyperion City behind. I know you said you would rather not leave, but I doubt any of your reasoning does you any good if you’re deceased,” Nureyev began to explain. “I arranged a pair of temporary hotel rooms a state or two away to give you time to lay low through the will reading. At that point, I’ll do what I can with the money to help you get established.”

“I—”

“I know this is all a bit much, but—”

Juno cut him off with a shake of his head. 

“Thank you. You really didn’t have to.”

Nureyev raised an eyebrow. 

“You saved my life, Juno,” Peter replied. “Even offering to take the case was likely enough to keep me out of the electric chair for long enough to escape.”

“You would’ve been fine without me,” Juno protested, though his words died in his throat when Nureyev laid his head upon his shoulder. 

“And gave me the best morning of my life.”

“You’re an idiot,” Juno scoffed. 

“Just grateful, my dear.”

“Do you do this for everyone you sleep with, or just the ones who make you breakfast?” Juno teased. 

“Why don’t we have this conversation when we’re somewhere safer? As much as I would love to pour my heart and soul out to you right here and now, I must tell you that I’ve found myself in quite the predicament,” Nureyev smiled. “You see, Juno, I’m walking arm in arm with a wanted criminal, who I just helped to escape.”

“Don’t let me forget to ask you again, then,” Juno said with a roll of his eyes. 

“I’m sure I won’t.”

“I just have one question,” Juno began, pausing about a foot from the glass door ahead of them. Nureyev’s look of curiosity was painted in the gentle blues of night. 

“Go on.”

“You said something about Rita holding up her end of the bargain.”

The car announced itself with a honk like an angry goose and a shout Juno would have known anywhere. 

“Speak of the devil,” Nureyev chuckled, dropping Juno’s arm to hold the door open for him. “Miss Rita, you are a sight for sore eyes!”

“Mistah Steel! Mistah Ransom!” Rita cried from a rolled down window, the tires of Ransom’s car squealing as she screeched to a stop at the curbside. “Get in the back, there ain’t any room in the front!”

“Rita!” Juno grinned. 

“I told you I knew how to drive,” she returned. 

“No, I—” Juno broke off with an incredulous laugh. “Are you sure?

“What’s the matter, dear?” Nureyev asked.

“What about Rita?” 

“There’s no Rita and Mistah Steel Detective Agencies without Rita,” she shrugged. “You wouldn’t make it two weeks without me.” 

“Fair,” Juno snorted. 

“And who knows what kinda business I’d get wrapped up in when they come looking for you? Sometimes it’s just better to leave,” Rita added. “Now quit giving me that look in hop in the car. We don’t got all night.”

“It’s just good to see you. I’ve had a hell of a day.”

“Well, come have a hell of a day in the back of Mistah Ransom’s car, boss,” Rita insisted. 

“After you, my dear,” Nureyev smiled, holding the back door open for Juno like a gentleman holding a carriage door open for the lady of his courtship. 

Juno just rolled his eyes and hoped Peter knew it meant the knot of warmth in his chest that he couldn’t possibly put into words if he wanted to. 

“Why are there so many suitcases in here?” Juno asked as he stuffed himself into the back seat. He recognized Nureyev’s leather travel bag among them. 

“Well, seeing as we’re all criminals on the run now, Rita and I supposed it would be safest to take as much as we could now and try to come back for the rest at a later date, likely once I have my hands on that inheritance,” Nureyev explained. “Unless you’d like to be sent to prison, that is. I’ll respect your choice whichever way it falls.”

Juno took him by the hand and squeezed. 

“Is that a yes?”

“I—” Juno started, breaking off to take a breath. “I want to stop by the headquarters of the Hyperion Tribunal before we go anywhere.”

“They must be closed at an hour like this,” Nureyev returned. “I wouldn’t want you to waste your final request.”

Juno shook his head and pulled his journal out of his pocket. 

“Somebody’s gotta know. Even if they don’t do anything with the scandal. Hell, even if they throw it out. I just need this in the hands of someone who might actually do something about it. I tried to fix this place, but I can’t do it alone,” Juno sighed. “If they can get enough people angry about this, we might be able to do something.”

“Juno—” Nureyev started, something like pity in his voice. 

“I’ve given up on fixing everything here. This city’s rotten to the core,” Juno continued before Nureyev could say anything else. “If there’s someone willing to fix it who won’t do it alone, I just think they should know what I know. Just one last gift for Hyperion before I leave.”

Nureyev reached over to squeeze his hand. When Juno looked up to meet his eye, something soft, equal parts pride and adoration, was sparkling in his gaze where the twin match flames had danced mere minutes before. 

“You heard the lady, Rita,” he began. “Just one last stop before we go.”

When Rita brought the car to a stop at the curbside, Nureyev offered to get the door for Juno. He shook his head, taking the notebook from his breast pocket and holding it in both hands like a looking glass. 

“Are you alright, dearest?” Peter murmured. 

Juno took a deep breath and nodded. 

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Juno said, preparing to open the door. 

Nureyev caught his collar in his hand and his lips in a kiss before he could go. Juno felt a pleasant hum coaxed from his chest, while Peter broke away to chuckle. 

“I’m gonna regret letting you two crazy kids sit in the back seat together,” Rita joked. Nureyev’s ears burned red. 

Juno didn’t get to hear much more of the conversation before he closed the door behind him, walked up to the mail slot, and tossed his journal inside. It was simple, in retrospect. He took less than twenty steps in his entire round trip, and far less than a minute passed by the time he was back in the car and en route to the place of business of a man one state over who would change Nureyev’s plates for free. 

Juno had spent the last two decades of his life waking up to roll the same boulder up the same hill every single day, watching as the sun set and the rock tumbled its way back to the trodden grass at the hill’s base once more. He hoped others, with unbroken arms and backs yet to grow weary from forcing themselves to bear an unbearable burden, might see the boulder and try to push it for themselves. He hoped they might try to push it together, for he doubted any person could do it alone. Anyone who tried didn’t truly want the boulder atop the hill. They just wanted to feel the ache in their bones. 

He didn’t turn to watch Hyperion City become a smaller and smaller blip on the horizon. He didn’t turn to watch one more smoggy horizon over the city, eyes only for the yellow-blue night ahead. At some point, Peter Nureyev squeezed his fingertips. At some point, he squeezed back, and hand in hand with the criminal he had meant to catch, Juno left his boulder far behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOWEE I loved this one so much!!!! not even gonna lie this was so much fun to write and i hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed making all the plot threads tie together!!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below!!
> 
> Find me on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!!

**Author's Note:**

> Wahoo!! Please comment with any/all theories and conspiracy boards. Or don't. Nobody can stop you
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or I'll play thief without a home on the kazoo in your kitchen at 3am
> 
> come yell at me on tumblr (or send me your theories) @hopeless-eccentric!! my twitter is @withane22 for those interested!


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